A life of Cardinal Mercier [microform]

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A Life of

CARDINAL MERGIER

BY

MONSIGNOR A. LAVEILLE

^5
VICAR-GENERAL OF MEAUX

TRANSLATED BY

ARTHUR LIVINGSTONE

THE CENTURY CO.

NEW YORK LONDON

M " ' '

Copyriglit, 1928, by
THE CENTURY Co.

FEINTED IN TJ. S. A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I THE FAMILY OF BARBE CROQUET .... 3

II THE STUDENT OF SAINT-ROMBAUT . .12

III A LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 33

IV A CHAIR AND A CANONICATE 54

V COMBAT 76

VI THE MIRACLE 102

VII THE ARCHBISHOP OF MALINES . . . .128

VIII A FIGHTING CARDINAL 155

IX A WORLD'S IDOL 196

X THE SAINT 218

A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

A LIFE OF CARDINAL
MERCIER

CHAPTER I

THE FAMILY OF BARBE CROQUET

IN the center of the plain of Waterloo, a few
hundred yards from the battlefield where Napo-
leon's Eagle, already wounded, finally broke both its
wings, stand the low, squatty, rectilinear houses of a
big Walloon village, Braine-l'Alleud. A Muscovite
spire perched on a massive church tower looks down
upon these unprepossessing dwellings, which never-
theless suggest a plenteous prosperity. One of them
in particular catches the eye. It stands at the end of
the long, narrow market-place, and almost at the
edge of the fields a two-story building, solidly tim-
bered, with a plain fagade, and a roof almost flat.
It is the little Chateau du Castegier, once a private
residence but of late years restored and remodeled
as a public center for various benevolent organiza-
tions. On November twenty-first, in the year 1851,
it witnessed the birth of Desire-Joseph Mercier.

4 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

The Merciers had not originated in that region
in fact, they had been Belgians only since the year
1640. Before that time they belonged to the titled
bourgeoisie of the lle-de-France their coat of arms
"a chevron or on azure, with three accosted roses,
argent." It is quite probable that Louis Mercier,
the prolific writer who has left us a curious and
picturesque "Tableau de Paris," was related to this
family.

What forced the Merciers of the seventeenth cen-
tury to move to the Walloon plains? Their family
history is silent on the point. Perhaps they were
attracted thither simply by the reputation of those
fine, fertile fields, which are a source of bounteous
fortune to all who apply themselves to agriculture
in the region. In any case, they made a success of
their farming, and lived comfortably on this soil
of Brabant, their adopted country.

At first they settled near Nivelles. Not till later
did they lease land at Braine-FAlleud.

The grandfather of Desire-Joseph was the first
to try his hand at business : to the cultivation of his
farm he added a tannery. This prospered only for
a time, however; though the income from his fields
maintained a fair degree of ease in the family. This
highly respected farmer administered the affairs of
his little town for thirty-four years he was com-
monly known as "the old mayor."

FAMILY OE BARBE CROQUET

This man's son, Paul-Leon Mercier, showed
early in life that he had less practical tastes. His
heart was set on painting, and if his father had not
kept a sharp eye on him, he would have run off to
Paris to perfect, in the studio of some master or
other, a talent already hailed in its first gleams
by a small number of enlightened friends. Chained
to the paternal home, Paul-Leon Mercier sought
compensation for the irksome restraint by devoting
the best part of his time to literature and the arts,
without concerning himself in the least with the
prosperity of the family domain. Like all the other
members of his house, he was singularly prone to
noble, responsive enthusiasms. In 1830, he awakened
to the thrill of patriotism, and with three other
Merciers, relatives of his, hastened to Brussels to
fire his shot in the cause of Belgian freedom. Then
he returned to Braine and gave himself up again to
his dreams.

His work as an amateur artist occupied him con-
stantly, his natural talent enabling him, untaught,
to produce pictures of some merit. There could be
seen, not so long ago, in a small room that Cardinal
Mercier used as an antechamber in his episcopal resi-
dence, a painting which always attracted the atten-
tion of callers with its quiet charm. It was a family
group, most prominent the "old mayor," his ear-
nest, strongly accentuated features reminding one of

6 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

his famous grandson; next, his wife, embracing her
flock in affectionate gaze; finally, five children,
among whom the artist himself. A dignified heir-
loom, surely, of a line that was to produce a prince
of the Church !

Paul-Leon Mercier himself, however, preferred
another of his works, the picture of a girl, fair-
haired, with deep, clear eyes. This was a portrait
of Barbe Croquet, as they used to say, who became
the artist's wife. The girl was also of a family of
farmers. She had a half-brother, Anthyme Charlier,
who was to lead a distinguished ecclesiastical career
as Dean of Virginal. The Charliers owned a farm
which together with the adjoining estate of La
Papelotte, the property of a Mercier, had been used
as a base of operations by several German generals
at the time of the final charge at Waterloo. Barbe
had also a brother, Adrien Croquet, who was to be
engaged for forty years as priest and bishop in
preaching the gospel to the Indians of North Amer-
ica, and to win an attractive sobriquet as "the Saint
of Oregon."

The young woman was in all respects the sister
of such brothers. Industrious, methodical, pious to
the point of taking communion frequently at a pe-
riod when the practice was by no means held in
high esteem, she was admired by her neighbors for

FAMILY OF BARBE CROQUET 7

the religious zeal she displayed in bringing up her
children. People liked to refer to her as "the saintly
Madame Barbe."

The son who later on brought so much glory upon
the family name once said on a day that marked
supreme public recognition of his life and character :
"My constant desire, my profound aspiration, was
ever to be a better man myself and to lead morally
upwards all those over whom I might have some
influence. That this thirst for moral ascent was first
instilled into me by my mother, I cannot doubt ; and
I am happy that a delicate allusion has afforded me
opportunity to utter here the name of her to whom, '
after God, I owe the best part of myself: my
mother, my sainted mother! From her example I
learned, dimly, unconsciously at first, consciously and
clearly later on, that true love consists in forgetful-
ness of self and in devotion to others. It was in
her heart, in the serene strength of her high re-
solves, that I read the words of a great life lesson:
that man is nothing; that success and adversity are
nothing; that God alone matters. To expect any-
thing of oneself is folly; to rely in the end only on
God is wisdom itself. These, so far as I can remem-
ber, were the earliest guiding principles of my life."

The son who paid this tribute to a Christian
mother was the fifth born in a family of seven
two other children had died in early infancy. The

8 A LIFE OF. CARDINAL MERCIER

rearing of this numerous brood was a stern task for
the courageous woman. It was a stern task, too,
for a poor amateur artist. Paul-Leon Mercier had,
it is true, other and more lucrative means of support
for his family; ! but ill-fortune seemed to pursue him.
A distillery, on the profits from which he had
counted to help him raise his children, failed, and
he did not survive the disaster.

Upon the poor widow, burdened with seven
fatherless children and deprived of all human sup-
port, there came overnight a problem as serious as
it was unexpected. She was obliged to sell the com-
fortable old manor of Le Castegier, the shelter of
the carved wooden cradle wherein she had rocked
all her children. They took refuge, all eight of them,
in a little house that stood in the very shadow of
the church-spire. It was as though, in their great
abandonment, they hoped that the Church might
afford them consolation and relief.

The education of the children was prosecuted in-
dustriously under priests of Braine. Three of the
little girls became nuns of conspicuous merit, one
with the Sisters of Saint Clara, the other two in
the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and
Mary. One of the boys, Leon, was able to complete
university studies for the profession of medicine,
and became a successful physician at Brussels.

In spite of the pecuniary difficulties of the family,

FAMILY OF BARBE CROQUET 9

little Desire-Joseph might have aspired like his
brother to make his way in some worldly vocation.
Among the family connections there was no lack of
influential people to extend him a helping hand.
One of his uncles was registrar at Hasselt; another
was secretary-general in the Ministry of Finance;
a first cousin, fidouard Mercier, w,as destined to
become a cabinet minister three times. All this was
enough to justify an expectation that young Desire
might one day be seen tranquilly seated in a com-
fortable swivel-chair at a desk in some important
department of the government.

But quite different ambitions were stirring in the
mind of the school-boy. The uncle, the Dean of Vir-
ginal, used to come now and then on visits to the
modest household of the Merciers; and he was al-
ways fond of unbosoming himself with his relatives
on the simple and austere joys which his ministry
of souls procured for him. From time to time, more-
over, letters would come in from the far-distant
solitudes of Oregon, telling of the successes which
at cost of privations and sufferings Father Croquet
was obtaining among the savages scattered in the
depths of the virgin American forests. These letters
were the topic of evening discussions in the family;
and as the boy, Desire-Joseph, listened to the
achievements of his uncles, a strange light would
gleam in his eyes. The fire of apostleship was al-

10 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

ready beginning to glow in his ingenuous soul, and
it was never to die out; for soon, Desire-Joseph an-
nounced that he, too, desired to become a priest.

Such aspirations had to be wisely guided, and
there chanced to be in Braine-PAlleud ,a vicar who
had been following the first signs of young Mercier's
vocation with keenest interest the Abbe Oliviers.
But Father Oliviers was not content with teaching
little Desire the catechism. He enlisted his services
as choir-boy, and, perceiving in him a religious zeal
equal to a very alert intelligence, he did not hesitate
to instruct him in the rudiments of Latin. But the
time soon came for the boy to part from his family
and follow the course imposed upon him by his
divine calling. Father Oliviers, appointed vicar at
Our Lady-beyond-the-Dyle, was obliged to move
from Braine to the episcopal city of Malines. What
would become of the child if left to himself in a par-
ish where at that time it was impossible to pursue
classical studies to advantage? The good priest re-
solved to take the boy with him and to enter him
as a day pupil at the Academy of Saint-Rombaut in
Malines.

This was in November, 1863 : Desire-JosepH jvas
then twelve years old.

FAMILY OF BARBE CROQUET II

Here ended the role of the humble priest whose
tender care, though he was far from suspecting it,
had prepared the way for one of the most glorious
careers of that episcopate. Forty-four years later,
in the Church of Our Lady of Diest, the one-time
choir-boy of Braine-l'Alleud, now a Cardinal, was to
preside over the sacerdotal jubilee of the Abbe
Oliviers, and to bear witness in a voice shaking with
emotion to the immense gratitude he bore his former
master. Who at that time could have told the aged
priest, bent under the weight of his many years,
that he would live through the injustices and the
barbarities of an atrocious war to see the glory of
his former choir-boy shine forth through all the
world, and that, passing the age of ninety, he would
himself survive the death of his beloved pupil?

CHAPTER II

THE STUDENT OF SAINT-ROMBAUT

Academy of Saint-Rombaut in Malines
JL was one of the earliest "free" schools of
classical studies to be founded in Belgium. Cardinal
Dechamps was responsible for its establishment,
and in 1863 ^ na d just opened its doors in the city
of the archbishopric. The rules and regulations
adopted for the institution at its foundation would
appear, from their tone of earnestness, to have been
drawn up rather for serious-minded adults than for
mere boys. That the scholars in attendance there
should have been able to abide by them is greatly to
their credit :

"What shall your watchwords be:

"i. Order at all times and in all places, for order
leads to God; it is the best proof that we worship
Him with that Fear which is the foundation of
Knowledge.

"2. Obedience to the masters. Obey promptly and
cheerfully, without questioning, without complaint;
remember that obedience is the cardinal virtue of
the good soldier, the missionary, the martyr.

12

STUDENT OF SAINT-ROMBAUT 13

"3. Self-respect. Watch over your pureness of
heart, your uprightness of intention, your cleanliness
of body and raiment; let your deeds be known of
men and your thoughts of God.

"4. Silence in chapel, in the class-room, in the
ranks. To keep silence is to show self-control and
at the same time to find favor with God, who asks
of us that concentration which is necessary for
worthy labor and for spiritual upbuilding.

"5. Behavior in Public. The good name of an
institution depends upon the conduct of its pupils
outside, its walls. Go to your homes or come to
school by the most direct route ; do not tarry in the
streets or loiter before the shop-windows. Do not
forget to tip your caps to people to whom such sign
of respect is due. Associate with no one except your
fellow-students. . . .

"6. Christian charity. Love one another; live like
brethren; let there be one heart and one soul among
you; be kindly toward your schoolmates. ... Be
thoughtful of others, and accept the faults of
others with tolerance."

In any event, young Desire Mercier made the
spirit of the institution so completely his own that
its austere maxims, cheerfully adopted and eagerly
pursued, were later to make their influence felt in
all the outstanding acts of his career as a priest.

14 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

Three of his teachers at Saint-Rombaut made a
lasting and affectionate impression upon him "M.
Robert, who taught him to obey, M. La Force, who
taught him to work and to will, M. Pieraerts, who
taught him to dare."

Young Mercier found board and lodgings with
the Misses Rydams, at Number 57, rue Notre-
Dame. These ladies were pious spinsters of Flem-
ish origin, and they spoke only their native tongue
a fact which might have tended to make the boy
feel lonely and to estrange him from his hostesses.
The actual effect was quite the opposite. With pre-
science, as it were, of his future, Desire was eager to
learn Flemish. He was delighted when he found him-
self obliged to speak that language, and he quickly
mastered it. This accomplishment was to stand him
in good stead later on as a powerful instrument in
his apostolate.

What was Mercier's intimate life during these
years at school which revealed to him the beauties
of the ancient literatures and made him an adept in
the French language ? Only vague and infrequent bits
of information are available on this period in his
career a dearth easily understandable. The boy
was a day pupil. He appeared at the academy only
at the hours of his recitations ; and it never occurred
to the excellent women in whose house he lived to
take note of his daily acts and exploits.

STUDENT OF SAINT-ROMBAUT !

We know, however, that when he had been at
Saint-Rombaut about two years, young Desire was
made a member of the Congregation of the Holy
Virgin, a distinction which presupposed special de-
votion to the Mother of Jesus on his part. The grad-
uation program of the year 1868 furthermore re-
veals that in a class of eleven pupils in "rhetoric"
he was holding second rank, while at the end of that
academic year he was awarded prizes in "Christian
doctrine," "elocution in Latin," and "translation
from Latin." Decidedly original methods on the
part of his Latin teacher at Saint-Rombaut may be
inferred from an incident which Mercier himself
related in after years :

"M. Pieraerts, after two weeks of classes in
rhetoric, said to us one day:

" 'You are studying too much !'

" 'We've always been told the opposite,' we an-
swered.

" 'You are getting to be so many grinds. Now
just throw your dictionaries and your exercise books
aside. You'll do nothing but read for a week!'

"He gave us a topic and directed the conversa-
tion. We soon began to realize that learning is
not simply a matter of memorizing. He was
always saying, in regard to commonplace things in
life:

" 'Pshaw! That's a mere cherry-stem!'

1 6 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

"One day, a member of the class suggested his
favorite phrase as a theme :

" 'Let's write on cherry-stems !'

" 'Well," said he, 'life is fragile like the stem of
a cherry. Yet the cherry-stem bears a piece of fruit
the cherry. . . . Our lives, likewise, must bear
their cherries the things we achieve.'

"It was a sharp reminder that anything may
furnish matter for reflection. It proved an invaluable
lesson for us !"

In spite of his distance from home, thoughts of
his family were a constant stimulus to the school-
boy's industry and zeal. He could see in his mind's
eye the little house in Braine, and picture his three
sisters toiling with his mother in a common effort to
provide, by dint of economies and often indeed of
privations, for his support. He was present, in imag-
ination, at the daily prayers which, morning and
evening, they raised to Heaven in his favor. And
above all, whenever vacations set him free, his first
thought would be to hasten back to the home where
an atmosphere of love and gentleness favored all
his impulses toward piety and religious fervor.

But the child had not been raised in a hothouse.
Perception of the hardships of his own family taught
him early in life to sympathize with others, giving
him, along with a sense of affectionate comradeship,

STUDENT OF S A I N T - R M B A U T 17

an instinctive interest in the plans and hopes of
young men who like himself came from hard-
working families. Such feelings, combined with the
natural exuberance of spirit that inclines every
fifteen-year-old boy toward physical activities, in-
duced Desire Mercier to become a vacation com-
panion of the young workingmen of Braine-l'Alleud
organized in the Catholic Association of St. Fran-
cois Xavier. Rivaling the Xaverians was another so-
called "liberal" group in the same town, which had
invented the nickname of "Mamelukes" for its Cath-
olic competitors. The Xaverians not only accepted
the epithet but showed themselves proud of it,
Desire Mercier even more than the others.

The Mamelukes were a jolly company. Every
Sunday they would all set out together along the
Estree road to imbibe a few mugs of beer in good
fellowship, or to "engage," as the Cardinal himself
writes, "in games and sports, now at piquet, now
at ninepins, for prizes which would be now a rabbit,
now a brace of pigeons." Desire took part in these
contests in a most natural and genial manner. He
worked hard for the rabbit. Sometimes he even won
it. Then, the evenings would be devoted to long
conversations, sometimes dealing with grave prob-
lems which were later to form some of the Cardi-
nal's most serious preoccupations. To these discus-
sions, carried on in a very spirited fashion, he owed

l8 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

some of that self-confidence he always showed in
argument. One day delegates of the Socialist In-
ternationale of Brussels came to Braine-l'Alleud and
challenged the Xaverians to a debate. The latter
won the vote of the judges, to the great joy of
Desire Mercier, who could hardly contain his sat-
isfaction at the triumph of certain ideas on the social
question to which he was already devoted at that
early age.

The rather austere conceptions of life propounded
and debated in this club of St. Francois Xavier, gave
Mercier a first and still distant glimpse of the prob-
lems of philosophy, of which it was time for him to
begin systematic study.

A change of institutions was now essential; for
the curriculum at Saint-Rombaut did not carry the
student beyond the languages and composition. On
the first of October, 1868, he was admitted to the
Petit-Seminaire of Malines, to follow a two-year
course in philosophy preparatory to more specifically
ecclesiastical studies.

Nothing could have been more severe in aspect
than the buildings which were now to be his resi-
dence for long months at a time. As the future
priests entered the somber Courtyard of St. Cath-
erine, girt with ancient structures containing dormi-
tories and class-rooms, the windows all in line, they

STUDENT OF S A I N T - R M B A U T 19

must have felt already cut off from the world, and
as it were weaned forever from its vanities. Fifty-
three young men began "philosophy" in Desire Mer-
cier's class. They came from all parts of the dio-
cese, from the lower grades of the Petit-Seminaire
itself, from Basse- Wavre, from Hoogstraeten, from
academies in Brussels and Antwerp, from Saint-
Rombaut in Malines. It did not take long for the
young man with the tall, erect figure and the clear,
sharp eyes, to distinguish himself among his fellows
and to win every one's confidence by his sweet and
engaging smile.

The austere atmosphere of the Lower Seminary
was at that moment gloomier than ever because of
the recent death of Canon de Bleser, headmaster of
the institution, who had been killed in an accident.
His successor, Father du Rousseaux, tended at first
to overawe new-comers by the sternness of his de-
meanor, though in the end he would win them by
his kindliness.

Soon, however, the future Cardinal found this
new environment congenial, if not to physical com-
fort, at least to his mental and spiritual needs. The
principal concern of the new headmaster was to
ground the candidates for the priesthood in a reli-
gious spirit sturdy enough to withstand whatever
trials might later assail it. He himself set an ex-
ample of life as deeply absorbed in communion with

20 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

God as it was prompt in the performance of the
present duty.

The effect of such an influence was to strengthen
in Mercier an aspiration for perfection which at this
time began to stand out in sharp relief in his per-
sonality. At Malines the future Cardinal set a high
ideal for himself and began to pursue it: not after
the manner of so many young dreamers, who are
satisfied when they have long paraded some fancy
through an imagination incapable of real accomplish-
ment; but rather after the manner of the pioneer,
who surmounts a new obstacle each day in a stead-
fast effort to reach a goal he has fixed as a test
for his endurance. It was his own experience that
he drew upon later on in life, when he declared in
a famous "talk" designed to encourage other stu-
dents along the road to the Beautiful and the Good:

"An ideal is a very distinct, a clearly defined
thing it is a lucid conception of a duty, to which
we must remain faithful, and which we must never
abandon."

But young Mercier felt that it was futile, even
for an energetic and persevering will, to aspire to
the summits, when the summits sought were those of
ultrahuman perfection and of priestly saintliness,
unless that aspiration were fertilized by prayer. In
his very first year in the Lower Seminary, Desire
Mercier was a model to his fellow-students, for

STUDENT OF S A I N T - R M B A U T 21

the concentration with which he entered into prayer
and the fervor of his worship in the presence of the
Host. On this point one of the three or four sur-
viving witnesses of that period of his life has left
us testimony that deserves quotation.

Says Father Oudens : "In the portrait by the artist
Josef Janssens of Antwerp, the illustrious Cardinal
is shown in the choir of his metropolitan church,
on his knees, in an attitude of fervent prayer. That
was his posture at prayer from the very beginning
of his stay in the seminary at Malines. For four
years we had the good fortune to observe him in
just that way always that same pious absorption,
when attending divine service, which is so note-
worthy in him to-day ! He never took his eyes from
the altar. His genuflexion before the Host as he
entered chapel was always an act of living faith
never a hurried or perfunctory gesture of routine.
And as we saw him returning from the communion-
table, we would say to each other : 'That is the way
Louis Gonzaga or Berchmann must have taken com-
munion!' We would all have desired to commune
with like earnestness."

Speaking of the admirable pastoral "retreats"
which Mercier, as Archbishop, and then Cardinal,
of Malines, was later to preach to his subordinates,
and to which Father Oudens himself had listened
when a curate, the same witness says :

22 A LIFE OF. CARDINAL MERCIER

"In all of us he kindled a spark of the sacred fire
which burned so brightly in his own heart ; but those
of us who had been fellow-students of his in the
seminary knew that these lectures on the spiritual
life were merely the theoretical expression of an
actual example he had given during his years of
preparation for the priesthood the example of a
gentle, a charming, an unassuming piety."

Such sincerity could not fail to accentuate the at-
tractive features of the young man's personality.
Great gentleness of manner, unmistakably the sign
of a real kindness of heart, had always distinguished
Mercier as a boy. At Malines these qualities seemed
to expand to full blossom in his contacts from day
to day with the comrades whose lives he was sharing.

Yet there was nothing deliberate or premedi-
tated, nothing stiff or constrained, in his behavior.
During hours of recreation Mercier entered into the
spirit of fun with all his heart, and his good-natured,
open-hearted smile was an incitement to others to do
likewise. He was always one of the gayest of any
group, fond especially of the witty rejoinder, of the
inoffensive prank, of radiant good-humor. And these
were traits which comrades of his days at school
were to recognize in him all his life long. As years
went by, graduates of his generation at the Lower
Seminary would call on him in his palace at Malines,
and invariably went away with one feeling:

STUDENT OF SAINT-ROMBAUT 23

"High offices and honors have not changed our
old schoolmate in the slightest!"

*

It could not have been a simple matter for Desire
Mercier to preserve a smiling countenance in that
institution whither he had come athirst for intel-
lectual enlightenment and for examples of virtuous
living. He had a natively keen intelligence, which
inclined him to successful exploration of metaphys-
ical problems. At the same time his was a mind
which imperiously demanded clear ideas and orderly
and logical exposition. As a matter of fact, the phi-
losophy taught in its elements in the lower and
higher seminaries of both Belgium and France
about the year 1868 showed the effects of the be-
wilderment into which a multiplicity of systems had
thrown the principal thinkers of the nineteenth cen-
tury. The manuals then in use in Church schools usu-
ally borrowed their main lines of doctrine from
Descartes ; but in the important problem of the foun-
dations of knowledge, they inclined toward the tra-
ditionalism of Lamennais or the diluted ontologism
of Ubaghs and Branchereau, both of these con-
demned, or at least disapproved, by Rome. Of the
philosophy which had guided the great theologians
of the Middle Ages the scholastic doctrine as
expounded by Saint Thomas not a word, unless to
dismiss it in a few vague or depreciatory phrases.

24 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

In the presence of such disparate theses devoid of
logical connection with each other, the teacher had
to do the best he could. When, as was usually the
case, he had no personal outlook, what principles
could he give his students to organize the facts they
would soon be acquiring? Yet could it be that phi-
losophy, that crown of classical learning, that science
which was expected to demonstrate the ultimate and
supreme rationality of life, was nothing but an
agglomeration of hypothetical and contradictory
postulates?

Young Mercier was painfully groping his way
through the fog of this vague eclecticism, when
Providence came to the aid of his ardent desire for
knowledge. An English student at the seminary,
the future Father Richardson, had brought to school
with him a manual of philosophy written in Latin;
and the budding philosopher from Braine-l'Alleud
thought he saw in it the compass that would guide
him to less turbid skies. The "Praslectiones Philo-
sophies" of Father Tongiorgi were not inspired by
pure Thomism the author frequently borrowed
from other systems; but he expounded scholastic
philosophy with sufficient clarity and detail for De-
sire Mercier to recognize in it that natural, rational,
and coherent explanation of the universe for which
his inquisitive mind had been searching for so many
months.

STUDENT OF SAINT-ROMBAUT 2$

The book of the Italian philosopher was a source
of intimate, secret joys for him. He could not util-
ize his new discoveries, either in his daily answers
in class or in his written examinations. On the other
hand, how could he expound convincingly or even
make serious effort to memorize systems which he
felt to be erroneous? This embarrassment accounts
for the fact that, excellent student though he was,
the future prince of Belgian philosophers did not
always succeed in holding first rank in this humble
class in elementary philosophy. Father Oudens sug-
gests as much, while paying full homage at the same
time to Mercier's eminent intellectual endowments.

"In his passion for study," says Oudens, "and, in
general, in his liking for hard work, Desire Mercier
was a salutary example for all of us. Despite his
quick and retentive memory and his penetrating un-
derstanding of the most involved questions of phi-
losophy (capacities which might well have excited
the envy of his comrades), he never displayed any
bitter eagerness to shine, or to outstrip competitors,
in a feverish race for factitious distinctions. He won
some personal triumphs, as did others of the better
students in his courses, but without ever becoming
vain ; and he was able, on occasion, to experience sin-
cere satisfaction at successes on the part of his
friends."

As in most ecclesiastical institutions, the Lower

26 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

Seminary at Malines held certain public assemblies
where the purpose was to train the students in cor-
rect Latin diction and incidentally to exhibit before
select audiences the better compositions produced
in the school. For the students of philosophy the
exercise consisted of formal debates on points of
philosophical doctrine. Desire Mercier had the
honor of being named champion three times in
these intellectual struggles, a foretaste of those
which were to play so large a part in his later life.
From the seriousness with which he took the defense
of his theses, Cardinal Dechamps, the presiding
chairman, was able to foresee his career as a thinker
and as a man of action.

His two years of "philosophy" completed, young
Mercier was ready for the Upper Seminary, to
which he was admitted on the first Sunday of Oc-
tober, in the year 1870. That was the feast-day of
Our Lady of the Holy Rosary.

Sedan had fallen just previously, and echoes of
the plaints of wounded France, as well as of the
haughty exultance of Germany, penetrated even to
the seclusion of the Seminary at Malines. The old
French blood of the Merciers boiled in the young
student's veins, and he felt growing within him an
invincible mistrust for a people that seemed to be
intoxicated with its ephemeral supremacy, and to be

STUDENT OF SAINT-ROMBAUT 27

stifling all sentiments of pity under the cult of force.
But such thoughts he had to banish from his mind if
he were to enter whole-heartedly upon his work in
the solitude of the Upper Seminary.

It was on the very day of his admission, just be-
fore matins, that Desire Mercier donned the cassock
for the first time. This ceremony marked his solemn
farewell to the world, and his formal repudiation
of its vestments. His impressions on that occasion
he was himself to describe years later. The moment
he found himself alone within the four white walls
of his modest cell, he fell to his knees, and, over-
flowing with joy, clasping his crucifix to his heart,
he repeated the song of the Psalmist: Quam di-
lecta tabernacula tua, Domine . . . "How amia-
ble are thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts ... A
day in thy courts is worth a thousand. I had rather
be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to
dwell in the tents of wickedness."

The life the students led at the Grand-Seminaire
of Malines was in no sense calculated to modify
the impression of austerity left by the exterior of
the buildings upon one who sees them for the first
time. There was nothing to suggest ease or luxury
or even to humor concern for physical comforts.
Great, cold, bare corridors; small, cramped cells,
only a few with fireplaces ; one room only heated in
winter the common hall; class-rooms, a refectory,

28 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

a chapel that never saw a fire: such the regime at
Mercier's new school! The idea was to train the
future priests in habits of abnegation and sacrifice,
to accustom their physical selves, from the very
outset, to self-denial and hardship.

Without hesitation and without complaint, Desire
Mercier strode forth along the arduous path that
leads to the altar. Every morning he could be seen
with a smock thrown over his cassock, making his bed
and sweeping his room, or lending a hand good-
humoredly at all the extra chores which arose from
time to time in connection with the festivals. His was
essentially a monastic soul. He joyfully adapted him-
self to his little whitewashed chamber, with its iron
bed, its two chairs, its plain pine desk its sole
adornment the crucifix, of which, in loving contem-
plation, he was fain to ask that light which books
did not always give him. It was in the Upper Sem-
inary at Malines that Mercier acquired a devotion
to evangelical poverty which in the years to come
neither eminence nor honors, nor even the splendor
of the cardinal's purple, was ever to weaken. Mean-
time, the traits of conduct which had distinguished
him during his residence in the Petit-Seminaire his
punctuality at all services, his fervor ?and concentra-
tion at prayer and at communion were accentuated,
rather than not, in this higher school.

STUDENT OF SAINT-ROMBAUT 29

Study of theology now more than repaid him for
the hours of futile labor which had seemed so long
to him before. This science, with its method of de-
duction based on the unshakable authority of the
revealed Word, satisfied the demand for logic and
clarity which was one of the characteristics of his
mind. Mercier, however, craved a more solidly ar-
ticulated synthesis of the propositions which grad-
ually came forth from study of the manuals. He
already knew, through Tongiorgi, that no one had
ever surpassed St. Thomias in the effort to construct
a rational system; and he resolved to complete with
the help of the "Summa Theologian" the often too
summary expositions furnished by the elementary
textbooks then in use in ecclesiastical schools.

The undertaking was a bold one. In his masterly
work St. Thomas does indeed treat most of the ques-
tions considered by modern professors of philosophy.
But he does not approach them in the order now
commonly accepted, nor does his plan follow the
lines of our theological syllabi. The language fur-
thermore which he uses, in common with all the
masters of his day, is a highly technical one, often
enough incomprehensible to any except the initiated.
Left to his own resources in such a matter, how was
a young student in theology to overcome such great
difficulties ?

To be sure Tongiorgi had given him a first

30 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

introduction to Thomist doctrine; but the eclectic
tendencies of that Italian author might easily have
led some minds astray. It was Mercier's good
fortune to come upon another book, which rendered
his task appreciably easier: the French translation
of Kleutgen's "Exposition and Defense of Scholas-
tic Philosophy." This work, by a German Jesuit,
was a thorough and scholarly interpretation, as
well as a brilliant defense, of the Thomist system.
Desire Mercier made of it his favorite reading.
Through it he obtained a solid grounding in the
medieval philosophy and was enabled to read the
"Summa" with profit from very early days in the
Grand-Seminaire. Mercier desired, moreover, some-
thing better than mere intellectual mastery in the
theological sciences.

"His frequent contact with the Fathers of the
Church," says M. Goyau, "his daily intimacy with
St. Paul, tended to make of him, by no means just
a specialist in sacred scholarship, but an apostle of
Jesus. If he learned the Epistles by heart, if in his
note-books at school he began translations of them
in that very personal manner of his which seems to
press the very substance from them, it was not for
purposes of exegesis: it was rather to saturate his
soul with those noble thoughts which created the
moral atmosphere of primitive Christianity.

"He was educating himself for the sake of the

STUDENT OF S A I N T - RO M B AU T 31

souls he would one day have to educate, and he
looked upon study, not as an enjoyment for the brain,
but as an apprenticeship for action. His intellectual
labors were wholly subordinate to his calling. He
deliberately turned away from broad and inviting
horizons which sudden but deep-reaching flashes of
vision revealed to him; he systematically humbled
within himself such desires and aspirations as did
not tend in all respects toward perfecting a future
priest. His three years in the seminary all looked
ahead to that half-hour on an April morning of the
year 1874, when, for the first time, he celebrated
communion. 'To the God who filled my youth with
joy,' he wrote on the Memento of his ordination;
and his 'youth in its joy' yearned only for a post
as parish priest, whence he might bestow upon
others the Word and the life of God, and bring into
daily reality 'that moment which is unique in the
world the eucharistic sacrifice !' "

*

A few months after his admission to the Upper
Seminary, young Mercier was judged worthy to take
the first steps toward holy orders. He received the
tonsure from the hands of Monsignor Anthonis,
headmaster of the Grand-Seminaire and Bishop Co-
adjutor of Malines, during the octave of Pentecost
in the year 1871. Those first bonds of "fellowship
with the Supreme Priest" seemed to fan to hotter

32 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

glow the flame which shone in his eyes whenever
he was in the presence of the Host ; and in attitude
and gesture the young clerk more ardently sought a
resemblance to Jesus the Christ.

Some of the most important functions in the sem-
inary were now entrusted to his care. He was named
subdeacon, and also, at pontifical services, assistant
in ceremonies to the archbishop. Meantime Canon
du Rousseaux happened to be in need of a substitute
teacher in the Lower Seminary; foreseeing the in-
fluence which Abbe Mercier would exercise over
students by virtue of the esteem in which he was
held for his kindliness and his qualities of leader-
ship, he succeeded in having him appointed to the
post temporarily vacant. Though he was the young-
est man in his class, Mercier served as dean in the
institution which had given him his own training,
from January 19, 1873, to the end of that aca-
demic year.

This term completed, he asked only to return
to his studious refuge; but the authorities had re-
marked his extraordinary powers of assimilation
and his subtle, penetrating intelligence. It was de-
cided that he should finish his preparation for or-
dination at the University of Louvain and then be
left there to pursue advanced studies.

CHAPTER III

A LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES

IN the intellectual capital of Belgium, which pos-
sessed the most celebrated and the best organ-
ized Catholic university in Europe, young Abbe
Mercier might have hoped to find a philosophy
taught officially, and to be relied upon as a safe
and solid foundation for the theology of which
he had mastered the general principles. Philosophy
was indeed held in high honor at Louvain. The
university had even developed, toward the middle
of the nineteenth century, an original, if not ex-
actly an independent, school of thinking of which
a saintly priest, the Abbe Ubaghs, was the leading
figure.

That was a period of spiritualistic and dogmatic
reaction against the empiricism which had flour-
ished in France at the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury, and against Kantian criticism which was just
beginning to invade Belgium. The traditionalism,
furthermore, of Bonald, Bautain, and Lamennais
had not been spared by Roman censure; whereupon
a number of thinkers, more ingenious than pro-

33

34 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

found, conceived the idea of linking the old classic
spiritualism with Malebranche. An era of analytical
metaphysics, of ontologism, began, supported in
Belgium by Ubaghs, principally, and by Rector La-
foret. But for a second time the Holy See had to
declare, regretfully but unmistakably, that salva-
tion was not to be sought in these new directions.

When Desire Mercier arrived at Louvain, the
university had not recovered from this last blow;
and the professors there, not quite sure of them-
selves, wavering between one system and another,
were unable to present a homogeneous and closely
knit body of doctrine. Errors indeed were combated
with a dialectic sharp and vigorous enough. But
when it came to replacing error with something
definite and constructive, hesitation and embarrass-
ment began.

This situation became startlingly apparent one
day when Mercier was called upon by one of his
teachers to make ia refutation of Comte's posi-
tivism. Carried along by the logic of his own
thought, the young student advanced without warn-
ing far beyond the horizons of his professor. The
audience was amazed. So far as Mercier was con-
cerned, the day of the old compromises was over.
His mind required a metaphysical system truly
coordinated and synthesized. Modestly and quietly

A LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES

he plunged again into his Kleutgen and once more
resolved in future to seek in St. Thomas, whom the
German scholar had brought within his reach, solu-
tions of the principal problems indicated in the uni-
versity curriculum.

His perfect simplicity, his smiling affability, his
eagerness to be of service, gained ready and whole-
hearted acceptance of his intellectual ascendancy
at Louvain. The authorities decided, indeed, at the
very beginning of his stay there, to make practical
use of his enthusiasm and his qualities of character.
There was, as there still is, in the city, a pension
named, in memory of its founder, the "College of
Pope Hadrian VI." Its president at the time was
Monsignor Jacobs. It housed lay students of law
and medicine in residence at the university. Abbe
Mercier was invited to assume, in addition to his
studies, a friendly supervision over these young
men, with the title of Assistant Regent.

This temporary contact with young scientists
was to have its effect on his own development. In
the intervals between hours of study, many dis-
cussions arose between the young theologian and
students who were trained as a matter of pro-
fessional routine to observe physiological phenom-
ena in minute detail. It became apparent to Abbe
Mercier that modern science had discovered or ex-
plained no end of facts which the philosophers of

36 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

the Middle Ages had either not known at all or
else inadequately appreciated. If one were to revert
to Thomist metaphysics, must not a way be found
to reconcile its theories with discoveries the im-
portance and the utility of which could not be
denied? The idea of a neo-Thomism budded in Abbe
Mercier's mind at the College of Pope Hadrian VI.
Time and toil were to bring it later to fruition.

*

The young clerk had recently received major
orders, but he was not yet a priest. However, one
of the duties of the assistant regent of "The Pope's
College" was to celebrate a daily mass in the chapel
there, so as to encourage piety on the part of the
students. Abbe Mercier was not old enough to
share in the ordinations that took place at Christ-
mastide of the year 1873. It was accordingly ar-
ranged that the priesthood be conferred upon him
on Holy Saturday, April 4, 1874.

It chanced that Cardinal Dechamps, Archbishop
of Malines, was not free on that day, and so in order
to receive holy unction the young deacon had to
apply to the papal nuncio in Belgium, Monsignor
Cattani. The rites were performed in the chapel of
the nuncio's residence. The auditor who assisted the
prelate on that occasion was the future Cardinal
Vincenzo Vannutelli, later dean of the Sacred Col-

A LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 37

lege, who always recalled that particular ordination
jyith deep emotion.

The next day was Easter; and Desire Mercier
hurried home to Braine-l'Alleud, his native village.
There he was welcomed by the smiles of his ad-
miring townspeople, by a joyous pealing of the new
bells in the sturdy church tower, by a countryside
'fragrant with blossoming lilacs; and moving in a
procession through the town he made his way to
the altar where he had taken his first communion,
to celebrate his first mass. Most of those who had
done their bit in preparation for that glorious day
were on hand to escort him to this solemn rendez-
vous with the "God who had filled his youth with
joy" : his brother, destined like himself to a liberal
career; his sisters, who, before beginning their per-
manent residence in their convents, had insisted on
earning to the very end to help their family give a
priest to the Church ; the old vicar, Father Oliviers,
who had started Mercier on his way to the altar.
There was only one dark cloud to cast a shadow over
this atmosphere of rejoicing. The heroic Madame
Mercier was unable to attend she had just suffered
a stroke ! The danger, happily, was but a temporary
one. The mother of the young priest was to recover
her health and live long enough to witness the first
dawning of her son's glory (she died in 1882).

38 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

However, Abbe Mercier's presence was urgently
required at the university and at "The Pope's Col-
lege." He returned to Louvain to place his new
powers at the service of the students, and to prepare
himself with renewed ardor for the examinations
which would advance him toward his academic de-
grees. The doctorate in theology at Louvain re-
quired long years of study. That was why it was
regarded with such special esteem in high ecclesi-
astical spheres. Abbe Mercier set about preparing
for his tests with the conscientiousness which, in his
eyes, mastery of the sacred sciences deserved. He
had carried off his diplomas as bachelor and master
in theology under heavy fire and with loud applause
from his teachers. Now, in July of the year 1877,
the public defense of his doctoral thesis was to prove
an intellectual treat for the university and, for the
candidate himself, a personal triumph.

That occasion marked the end of Mercier's life
as a student. Being a doctor, he was by definition
fitted to teach. The authorities were careful not to
overlook the fact.

During the few months of the year 1873 which
the Abbe Mercier had spent as substitute in the
Petit-Seminaire at Malines, the headmaster, M. du
Rousseaux, had observed in him qualities of judg-
ment and tact which, combined with deep piety and

A LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 39

sound scholarship, had given him from the very first
remarkable influence over his pupils. The young
priest's successes in the course of the following
years had served to heighten that esteem. When,
therefore, in 1877, the professor of philosophy in
the Lower Seminary became head canon, M. du
Rousseaux requested Cardinal Dechamps to name
the former student of Malines to fill the vacant
chair. So it came about that, at the opening of the
school year in October, Abbe Mercier assumed that
very desirable position which seemed to offer him
promise of a long career as a teacher of philosophy.
He was then twenty-six years old.

What system would he offer his pupils ? Since the
days when Tongiorgi's manual had given him some
knowledge of Thomism, scholastic philosophy had
been gaining ground everywhere. It had already
been restored to favor in the principal Italian sem-
inaries through the works of Canon Sanseverino
and Father Liberatore. In France, too, if Abbe
Mercier had been called to teach there, he would
not have found himself alone in an effort to revive
medieval thought. As early as 1860 elementary
textbooks, such as those of Grandclaude and Ros-
set, had introduced scholastic learning into that
country. The manual of Farges and Barbedette,
still in use in most Sulpician seminaries, appeared in
its first edition in the year 1874.

40 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

But the young professor was to teach at Malines
where the sporadic efforts of French and Italian
Thomists were either unknown or frowned upon.
To take the initiative in so weighty a reform, even
in a lower seminary, assumed in a young man of
twenty-six a high degree of courage. Fortunately
M. du Rousseaux placed absolute reliance on Mer-
cier's competence and good judgment. The head-
master not only let him have his own way but even
encouraged him. He set bravely to work.

The buildings of the Petit-Seminaire of Malines
did not have, forty years ago, the inviting appear-
ance and the vast proportions which they display
to-day. The room assigned to the courses in philoso-
phy was low, dark, dingy. The narrow windows, pro-
tected by thick gratings against turbulent pranks on
the part of the students, allowed but a few wan rays
of sunlight to filter within. But in those days no
one gave any thought to comforts in Church
boarding-schools; and Abbe Mercier, in particular,
was from the start the kind of man to lift the minds
of his students above all material preoccupations.

It is not difficult to imagine the scene which all
his students so well remember. Assembled every
morning in this somewhat funereal class-room, the
young men awaited the arrival of the professor.
In pensive silence Abbe Mercier appeared it was

A LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 41.

like a ray of light and of joy. Thoughtful, however,
his arms filled with books, he made his way to his
desk, lowered his eyes for a moment to collect his
thoughts, and then, in reverent demeanor, recited
the usual invocation to the Holy Spirit. Hardly had
he begun his lecture when one could see how com-
pletely he had mastered his material. Unusual skill
was required to bring home to twenty-year-old boys
such far-away abstractions, such finely drawn rea-
sonings, expressed originally in a language often
judged obsolete. Like a shrewd teacher thoroughly
versed in his subject, he managed to elucidate the
most complex theories by simple comparisons, fa-
miliar examples. To clarity and simplicity of exposi-
tion he added precise diction, systematic procedure,
along with an animated tone of voice, commanding
the attention of every one and making the hardest
subject seem easy. Gentle, friendly, Professor Mer-
cier was just an older comrade among younger
ones. His students all adored him.

His course was divided into two sections, corre-
sponding to the two years devoted to the subject in
the Lower Seminary, the second-year students form-
ing what is .still called the "advanced course." Abbe
Mercier was, however, aware that it was not suffi-
cient to impart knowledge, even if this were done
clearly and methodically. It was just as important
that the students themselves be able to express

42 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

what they had grasped and assimilated. That was
why he organized, on his own initiative, the "phi-
losophical clubs" at Malines.

Each Sunday, during the study-hour which pre-
ceded recess, the young men in the lower section
would meet in groups of ten or twelve under the
presidency of honor students of the advanced
courses. Some question relating to subjects recently
studied had been previously assigned as "the order
of the day"; the topic chosen would give rise to
searching discussion among the the seminarists. If a
chairman needed help in conducting the debate
to the best advantage, he would consult the
professor beforehand. Abbe Mercier, who usu-
ally attended, would give the floor successively to all
those who thought they had something to contribute.
Walking up and down among the students, he would
follow the debate attentively, approving the good
replies, correcting or amplifying others. All had
practice in expressing their thoughts easily and
clearly, and went away at the end of the hour with a
new fund of ideas and a keener thirst for knowledge.

"How well and how pleasantly we remember
those Sunday meetings!" one of the students of
those days writes. "Doubtless in the ardor of our
youth we were at times carried away into somewhat
Homeric, not to say inopportune, language. But al-

A LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 43

ways, thanks to the professor's kindly supervision,
the most fraternal spirit reigned among us."

But on being admitted to the priesthood, Mercier
had dreamt of something other than an intellectual
career. He had promised himself, and he had prom-
ised God, to be an apostle in the fullest meaning of
the word, in all possible ways and to the very end
of his life. When, therefore, Monsignor du Rous-
seaux left the Petit-Seminaire to become Bishop of
Tournai, and Canon Mangelschots replaced him as
headmaster of the Lower Seminary, the young pro-
fessor accepted with the most profound satisfaction
the position of spiritual adviser to the future candi-
dates for ordination.

*

Mercier was very young, it is true, to act in this
capacity toward men almost as old as himself, and
above all to pass judgment on ecclesiastical voca-
tions. But the prestige of his virtues and the charm
of his charitable spirit drew hearts spontaneously
toward him. He soon possessed the implicit confi-
dence of the one hundred and fifty youths who made
up the school. No effort was too great when he had
an opportunity to enlighten or to encourage his be-
loved students or to confirm one of them in union
with God. The authority he enjoyed from his recog-
nized scholarship, his perspicacity, and his tact more

44 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

than offset anything lacking in him on the score of
age.

"Who does not remember," writes the same stu-
dent, "the truly paternal welcome he used to give
us when we went to confide our anxieties to him (
our family troubles, our inner perplexities, our
doubts concerning our calling? M. Mercier listened
patiently, encouraged us to open our hearts when
we seemed to be hesitating, immediately grasped,
with his keen insight, the nature of our worries when
we had described them imperfectly, and at once sug-
gested some efficacious remedy. God alone, the sole
witness of these intimate conversations, would be
able to tell how much sadness he consoled, how many
hearts he inspired, how many doubts he dispelled."

In his work as spiritual director, Abbe Mercier
by no means urged all those who confided in him
to continue toward the priesthood. His insight and
his firmness were as great as his kindliness ; and he
did not hesitate to guide toward a mundane career
any aspirant whom he found mistaken as to the na-
ture of his calling. Believing the point of departure
for all progress toward true piety to be regular and
assiduous meditation, Abbe Mercier had no peer in
persuading his students to practise it, in helping
them over its difficulties, in enabling them to enjoy
its blessings. Next in importance after study of the
great masters of spiritual life, and almost on a level

A LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 4$

with prayer, he recommended the practice of self-
examination; and, himself a gentle and benevolent
priest, he urged that such examination dwell in par-
ticular upon "mortification," or the humbling of
pride. So striking and so personal were his exhorta-
tions on this subject that some of them were
brought together in a sort of tract by students who
had benefited by them. This pamphlet "Concern-
ing Christian Mortification, by a former Spiritual
Director of a Seminary" was widely read among
the Belgian clergy of a generation ago. Some of its
admonitions, their profound wisdom emphasized
by the convincing imperatives in which they were ex-
pressed, show something of the temper of the man :

"The moment you feel that your body is in the
slightest degree disposed to play the master,
straightway treat it as a slave.

"Humiliate your imagination when it would se-
duce you with the lure of some conspicuous posi-
tion, when it would depress you with the prospect
of an obscure future, when it would irritate you with
the memory of some word or act that may have hurt
you.

"Avoid obstinacy in your ideas, stubbornness in
your opinions. Cheerfully allow the views of others
to prevail, unless there be at stake some issue on
which it is your bounden duty to speak your mind.

"Above all else and this is the crucial point

46 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

humble your own will ! Bring it constantly to yield
before what you know to be God's good pleasure
and the order of His Wisdom, regardless of your
own likes and dislikes, your own desires or aver-
sions. Yield even to your inferiors in matters which
do not concern the glory of God and the duties of
your curacy."

To presume to speak in such terms, Abbe Mer-
cier must have felt himself completely liberated
from the sway of natural instincts and, consequently,
to be in close union with God. One day of each
month saw the recurrence of an exercise in which
the spirituality of the youthful confessor made it-
self even more potently manifest, if that were pos-
sible. It was an exercise in "spiritual contempla-
tion." On that occasion he asked his seminarists to
engage in profound meditation all day long and to
concentrate particularly on the presence of God.
But the decisive moment for spiritual regeneration
came at the evening lecture which was followed by
the "preparation for death." Motionless, his hands
clasped, his eyes half-closed in inward gaze upon
some divine reality, the young priest would begin
to speak, very slowly, with such impressive genu-
ineness, such evident faith, that a tremor of Divine
Love would vibrate through all his hearers. Com-
plete silence would reign throughout the hall and
continue after he had uttered his final words, as

A LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 47

though all were trying to stamp his message indel-
ibly upon their hearts. And, the next day, the hun-
dred and fifty students would go about, like the
disciples after the supper in Emmaus, repeating to
one another: "Did not our heart burn within us,
while he talked with us by the way, and while he
opened to us the Scriptures?"

And, stirred to the very depths of their being,
they would encourage each other to new efforts to-
ward the ideal which they had glimpsed.

Abbe Mercier at that time cherished no other
ambition than to pass several years in the tranquil-
lity of the Petit-Seminaire at Malines in the service
of young men so dear to him. To prepare worthy
priests for that diocese seemed in his eyes a magnifi-
cent and meritorious task for a man. But his aim
was a future priest educated as well as saintly, and
while teaching the philosophical system which he
considered closest to the spirit of the Church because
best adapted to the scheme of its dogmas, he kept
asking himself, and not without anxiety, just how
successful that system would prove for the student
later on in withstanding the shock of contrary opin-
ions, or, indeed, in resisting the sheer inertia of ig-
norance in circles unaffected as yet by Thomist views.

Since his recent accession, Pope Leo XIII had
been constantly urging the Catholic world to return
to the philosophy of the Middle Ages. Weary of

A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

the sterile speculations which for two centuries past
had been tossing Christian thought back and forth
between the presumptuous audacities of Cartesian-
ism on the one hand and the anti-intellectual tend-
encies of ontologists and fideists on the other, the
Pope was determined to put an end forever to all
such incoherent efforts. The Church possessed, in
the treasury of its traditions, a philosophy as solidly
grounded in rationality as it was marvelously har-
monious with Church dogmas! He planned to re-
store it.

That philosophy, as we have already remarked,
was indeed not unknown in Italy, and it was begin-
ning to make its way in France; but in both those
countries it was still accessible only in the abridge-
ments, not to say the disfigurations, of elementary
textbooks. Leo XIII wished it to be known in its
authentic sources and especially in the works of the
man whose broad and penetrating genius had won
him, in truly Christian centuries, the epithet of "An-
gelic Doctor." Not that His Holiness was concerned
to exhume, for the satisfaction of archeologists
themselves ignorant of it, a congealed or petrified
metaphysic. His hope rather was to give new life
to scholastic method by bringing it into contact with
facts, to demonstrate its accord with the most recent
discoveries of science, and thereby to make it the
foundation of vital, contemporary thinking. In this

A LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 49

way he hoped he could bring modern minds back
to a Christian faith and cure social anarchy by first
curing anarchy in thought.

The enterprise was a formidable one. It meant
upsetting an entire world. How make minds infatu-
ated with modern scientific achievements accept as
guiding principles the theses of a doctor who had
disappeared from the face of the earth more than
six centuries before, whose very name, indeed, was
all but unknown to any number of scholars? How
propagate, even through the clergy of Europe and
the New World, doctrines evolved in so-called
Dark Ages and apparently incomprehensible be-
cause couched in a Latin judged barbaric?

Leo XIII remembered that at the beginning of
his career he had been papal nuncio in Belgium.

"He had at that time," says Father Noel, "be-
come intimately acquainted with the University of
Louvain, and he had perceived offhand the immense
possibilities of that institution. It was the only one
in the world to unite two important characteristics:
on the one hand, Catholic and free, it was, on the
other, a great and a complete university, for cen-
turies past the educational center of a nation,
independent of the state yet possessing all the pre-
rogatives of state institutions, and imparting, under
conditions of absolute freedom, instruction in all
branches of learning, whether literary, scientific, or

50 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

professional, to the intellectual elite of a country
located in the very center of modern civilization.
What an advantage to have religious problems
studied in the light of researches in all scientific
fields, conducted, first-hand, by members of the same
institution! How beneficial, moreover, to scientific
research itself the spirit of a broad and enlightened
Catholicism animating an establishment of that size !
The Belgian nuncio then and there conceived the
potentialities of such an interpenetration of scien-
tific life and Christian thinking; and, when the time
came to realize his dream of a Th'omistic re-
vival, his thoughts quite naturally turned to Lou-

vain."

His plan of action once determined, Leo XIII
resolved to make solemn announcement of his en-
terprise through the encyclical, jEterni Patris,
which he published on August 4, in the year 1879.

However great the significance of that pontifical
letter and the reaction to it throughout the world,
it was really little more than a declaration of inten-
tions. The first step toward actual achievement was
not to be taken till a year later. In an epistle, dated
December 25, 1880, the pontiff requested the Bel-
gian bishops to create a chair of Thomist philosophy
at the University of Louvain, that instruction in
that subject might be offered to all students.

A LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 1

Consternation among the bishops, who were
scarcely prepared for such a command! At first
glance it was the difficulties they saw. How force
even upon the best Belgian society, intelligent, to
be sure, but none the less utilitarian, the idea of
courses which would lead to no career, would deal
with doctrines and methods long buried in the past,
and be offered in a Latin unknown even to profes-
sors of the classics? With a budget already taxed
to meet the annual expenses of the university, where
find the money for a new professorship? Where,
finally, was the man capable of assuming responsi-
bility for a course over which the Pope would keep
watch with closest interest?

The bishops hesitated. They tried to gain time by
sending evasive replies to Rome. When Leo XIII
again brought pressure to bear, they thought it
their duty to begin casting about for a professor.
They were inclined to choose Monsignor Van Wed-
dingen, a metaphysician of repute, very well versed
in the divers schools of modern thought. Van Wed-
dingen, moreover, had published, just previously, a
scholarly and illuminating commentary on the en-
cyclical Mterni Patris, which had made known in
Belgium the far-reaching significance of that docu-
ment. When a rumor of Van Weddingen's nomina-
tion reached Abbe Mercier at the Petit-Seminaire
in Malines, the young man exclaimed:

52 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

"Ah, if Van Weddingen is chosen, I shall surely
register for the course!"

But Monsignor Van Weddingen was at that time
chaplain at court, and, in view of the anticlerical
tendencies of the liberal ministry then in power, Leo-
pold II felt under no obligations to deprive him-
self of a priest attached to his palace to do a favor
to a Catholic university. The nomination had to be
withdrawn, and the bishops again took refuge in
evasions and delays which at last began to tax the
patience of Rome.

Two years had passed since the Pope first re-
quested the creation of the chair and nothing had
as yet been done. Regretfully, Leo XIII let it be
known that he was about to send to Louvain at
his own expense an Italian Dominican of recognized
ability, and that, in order to give the man greater
prestige, he would invest him with the rank and
title of bishop. Forthwith the professor designated
received orders to proceed to Belgium.

Confronted with a new-comer who was to be
both a professor and a bishop, what would be the
position of so many teachers who had grown old in
their profession, or indeed of the rector himself,
who did not enjoy such high rank in the Church?
And what would Europe think of a Belgian uni-
versity which had to go to Italy to find a competent

A LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 53

instructor? Some way out of the difficulty had to
be found whatever the cost I

Again the bishops met, this time under the chair-
manship of Cardinal Dechamps. The new bishop
of Tournai, Monsignor du Rousseaux, had a candi-
date to offer, that the incumbent of the new chair
might be a Belgian. In fact, he intended to propose
a priest of whose learning and character he had
personal knowledge of long standing: Abbe Mer-
cier.

"Would he do?" asked the cardinal.

"I can tell Your Eminence this: that if Abbe
Mercier belonged to my diocese, I should never give
him up without a struggle!"

Such a recommendation was enough. To conform
to the regular procedure, the rector of the univer-
sity, Monsignor Pieraerts (Abbe Mercier's former
Latin teacher) made the official nomination. It
was unanimously accepted, on July 29, 1882.

The election was immediately reported to Rome.
The Italian professor was at Trent, already on his
way. A telegram canceled his appointment. On the
twelfth of August Abbe Mercier was named honor-
ary canon of Malines. But before beginning his uni-
versity teaching, he had to have the express ap-
proval of the Pope. His own conscience, moreover,
demanded that he spend some time in further prep-
aration for his course.

CHAPTER IV,

A CHAIR AND A CANONICATE

FOR the philosophical renaissance which he
hoped to work out in Belgium, Leo XIII was
offered a priest thirty-one years old, whose name
had not yet crossed the frontiers of the diocese of
Malines, and who had to his credit only four or five
years of teaching in a lower seminary. The Pope
could not think of giving this unknown man his
confidence until he had first reassured himself in a
personal interview. The "great abbe," as his stu-
dents were already calling him, was summoned to
Rome.

In anticipation of his audience with the Pope,
Abbe Mercier thought it wise to have long con-
ferences with the masters of Italian Thomism,
Zigliara and Liberatore, Prisco, and Monsignor
Talamo. He noticed at once that those scholars were
inclined to a defensive rather than an offensive at-
titude. Indisputably masters of the doctrines of the
"Summa," it had scarcely occurred to them to bring
those principles abreast of modern scientific achieve-
ments; and they tended, it seemed to him, to heap

54

CHAIR AND CANONICATE $$

too comprehensive a scorn upon modern philosophi-
cal systems of which they had not always grasped
the significance. It was apparent that a scholarship
thus conceived would remain an affair of the theo-
logical seminaries, without exerting any appreciable
influence on lay society at large. These masters,
however, were thoroughly versed in scholastic doc-
trines and disposed, rather than not, to keep them
free from modern alloys. Abbe Mercier made good
use of his conversations with them in drawing up
the prospectus which he was to submit to the Pope.

****

The interview was a most exciting one. Here was
a young priest hardly free as yet from work with
mere school-boys. What impression would he make
on a Pope who was planning a reform of modern
thought, and indirectly of modern society, by re-
viving an ancient doctrine? Could any one think of
undertaking so vast a project with so humble an
instrument? Leo XIII's penetrating eyes rested for
a time on the pale countenance of his visitor, and
then he proceeded to subject him to a most search-
ing examination. Buoyed up by the confidence the
bishops of his country had reposed in him, strength-
ened by an entire absence of ambition and conse-
quently of fear, Abbe Mercier answered questions
modestly but without embarrassment. The Pope de-
sired, as the young priest already knew through the

56 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

encyclical Mterni Patris, that the principles of
Catholic philosophy be applied to the physical and
natural sciences that these "might be made to pro-
duce all the results of which they were capable."
He learned, furthermore, in the course of the con-
versation, how highly the Pope esteemed the ef-
forts made by the medieval scholastics to bring the
conquests of physical and natural science to bear
upon the particular field of philosophy.

The Abbe on his side had long been pondering
on the state of mind of the medical students over
whose debates he had formerly presided at the Col-
lege of Pope Hadrian VI. He had been struck by
their invincible tendency to mix physiological ques-
tions with every theory of psychology brought be-
fore them. In their eyes metaphysics had to take
account of facts and be made to accord with experi-
mental science. It was evident that, in all branches
of human knowledge, the same demands would be
made of philosophy. Abbe Mercier had held these
convictions for a long time and he ventured to ex-
press them to His Holiness. Their minds were on
common ground the mind of a great Pope, des-
tined to throw so much light on difficult problems
of his age, and the mind of this young, unknown,
and untried professor. The Sovereign Pontiff gave
his confidence to the envoy of the Belgian bishops.
He examined the outline of the proposed course

CHAIR AND CANONICATE 57

and returned it with a few minor suggestions, but
very explicitly approving it as a whole. The chair
of "higher philosophy according to Saint Thomas"
was definitely established at the University of Lou-
vain and Abbe Mercier was to be its first incum-
bent. Leo XIII had been impressed, not only with
the penetrating intelligence of the candidate and the
sureness of his scholarship, but even more with his
demeanor of thoughtful modesty and the upright-
ness of character revealed by his large, clear eyes
that seemed to illumine his face with infinite gentle-
ness. After the young man's departure, the Pope
remarked, with a note of affection in his voice :

"I like that boy Mercier. He is a man of great
intelligence, of great piety, of great will-power.
What an attractive personality!"

%

That he had will-power there was now ample
occasion for young Mercier to prove. As for mas-
tering medieval doctrine and comparing it with the
principal systems of modern thought, he could de-
pend on his books; but if, as the Pope desired, he
were to attempt a synthesis of the experimental
sciences and Thomist philosophy, he would have to
be adequately informed in each of the many
branches of the former. Abbe Mercier had no such
competence, at least to his own way of thinking.
Accordingly he resolved, before beginning his own

A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

lectures, to become a student once more; and, first
of all, in order to acquire the knowledge of psy-
chology that he desired, to have first-hand knowl-
edge of those physiological experiments which were
then regarded as most interesting or most conclu-
sive.

At the moment Charcot's observations and the-
ories on nervous cases treated in the hospital of
La Salpetriere in Paris were everywhere exciting
the world of science. How could Mercier investi-
gate the experiments of the famous physician? How,
especially, could he profit by them? Having the
will, it was easy to find the way. The young teacher
let his beard grow, donned civilian clothes, and set
out for Paris. A few days later there could be seen
at Charcot's lectures a young man of distinguished
bearing but of severely plain attire (plain, in spite
of a pin with a double eagle that he was using for
his cravat) . He went by the name of Doctor Mer-
cier. He was in reality the canon of Louvain.

When he had derived from the course all the in-
formation he deemed essential for his particular
purposes, Abbe Mercier hurried back to Belgium.
There he shed his beard, reassumed the cassock he
was never to lay aside again, and made ready to
face the astonishment and, if need be, the criticisms
which would doubtless greet the opening of his
course.

CHAIR AND CANONICATE

These were moments of heartrending separations
and of poignant anxieties for Abbe Mercier. Just
as success was smiling upon him in the Lower Semi-
nary at Malines, just as he was beginning to find
a delightful and a powerful support in the admira-
tion and affection of his pupils, he was being called
upon to break old ties, abandon cheerful prospects
of a safe and secure future, for other work where
success would come slowly, if at all, with excellent
chances of a resounding fiasco. As he faced the situa-
tion, shivers of cold terror would sweep over
him.

And he had reason to fear. Aside from the sup-
port of the Pope, powerful, indeed, but distant, he
could count with certainty on little sympathy. Con-
ditions, on the contrary, were all against him. In
the great centers of philosophy, especially in the
state universities, modernness was the watchword
of the day. Almost all thinkers had been infected
with the virus of Kantianism, or at least fascinated
with the subtle imaginings of German thought. They
had not ceased lavishing their contempt upon the
pretended "darkness" of the Middle Ages. They
would not accept without protest a return to the
thought of those distant days.

At Louvain itself, in the very bosom of the
Catholic university, Abbe Mercier's innovation

60 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

would undoubtedly create a delicate and embarrass-
ing situation. Since the misadventures of Abbe
Ubaghs, all the professors of philosophy and the-
ology, with the possible exception of Bossu, an
avowed Cartesian, called themselves Thomists ; and
Thomists they doubtless were, though inadequately,
inconsistently, without much conviction. But why,
then, a new professorship in Thomism? What lay
underneath this appointment of a young man to a
new chair apparently set up in opposition to older
and much respected ones?

More dangerous than hostility on the part of the
university staff would be a general indifference to
this new teaching. To stand up before the scientific
world and lift the shroud of oblivion which for cen-
turies had covered the weighty tomes of the scho-
lastic doctors would at that time have been a hazard-
ous enterprise in any country, but nowhere more so
than in Belgium. Whatever the reasons may have
been, whether an innate tendency of the Belgian
to prefer the positive and the definite to the specu-
lative, or whether insufficient stress previously laid
on philosophical studies in university curricula, the
fact was that at that time almost all university
courses aimed at preparation for a vocation or a
profession. There was little interest in pure scholar-
ship, in research devoid of practical reference. What
would be the fate of a doctrine easily representable

CHAIR AND CANONICATE 6l

as a return to abstractions condemned by the prog-
ress of modern times ?

To these difficulties, in themselves already grave
enough, still another would be added: the optional
character of the new courses. The Belgian student
was already overburdened with the requirements of
his regular examinations. At his elbow stood parents
for the most part interested only in such studies as
promised immediately useful returns to their child.
Would there be any patronage for extra courses not
clearly and explicitly connected with any career?

The Belgian prelates, at least, might have been
actively interesting their influential parishioners in
this new direction. But those were the days of the
Frere-Orban ministry. Catholics everywhere, lay-
men and clergy alike, were absorbed in projects for
"free" schools to neutralize the antireligious tend-
encies of the state schools. This was not just the
moment to raise money and expend energy in behalf
of a new professorship at the University of Lou-
vain!

The problem, if Mercier were not to fail, was
threefold: "to arouse the interest of students in
pure research, the interest of the Belgian public in
philosophy, the interest of scholars and scientists in
St. Thomas"; and all this, while disarming local
suspicions, and adjusting local complications, at Lou-
vain. The most courageous soul might well have

62 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

quailed before such a task; but it was a task well
calculated to prove the quality of a great intelligence
fortified with a stout heart. Confident of divine sup-
port, which he incessantly besought in his prayers,
and strong in the feeling that he was in the right
since he was obeying an explicit command of the
Pope, Canon Mercier set bravely to work.

*

His inaugural lecture, of an introductory nature,
dwelt on the many advantages to be derived from
Thomism in providing a sound orientation for mod-
ern thought. His real test, however, was to come in
the first lecture in the course itself, where he would
meet a skeptical audience composed of widely vary-
ing elements. Attracted largely by curiosity, stu-
dents attended it in considerable numbers, coming
from all faculties of the university, representing
technical training of many different kinds, but en-
cumbered, on the whole, with a very light philo-
sophical baggage. They looked forward with great
glee to this offering of apocalyptic phrases which
the new professor would doubtless put forward to
guide them through the dreary metaphysic of mum-
mified pedagogues of the Middle Ages.

But, at the very opening of the course, what a sur-
prise! They were astonished to hear the language
of their respective specialties "comparative gram-
mar," "cellular biology," "physiology of the nerv-

CHAIR AND CANONICATE 63

ous system" ! Could that be the medieval doctrine
they had thought of as bristling with antiquated ex-
travagances? That, and no other; for just as soon
as the discoveries accumulated by the various
sciences were grouped and harmonized in general
concepts, the scholastic formulas of St. Thomas be-
gan to emerge; and it turned out that the baroque
Latin of the Angelic Doctor when paraphrased by
the professor had no other meaning than that which
the nature of the subject would have led one to an-
ticipate. Something very modern, then, this Tho-
mism, something alive, contemporary, interesting!
And all of them, jurists, philologists, physicians
alike, were caught with the same zeal to learn more
about scholasticism and to discuss its problems. The
new professor's success was as complete as it was
unexpected.

Canon Mercier, to be sure, had been paying a
high price for this triumph, and every day thereafter
he continued to impose a prodigious amount of work
upon himself in order to maintain the same high
level of instruction. We saw him, some months back,
working under Charcot in Paris; but there he had
been able to familiarize himself with only one spe-
cialty. To acquire in other subjects the knowledge
indispensable to his purpose of modernizing Tho-
mism and winning it a hearing, he did not hesitate to
come down from his professorial cathedra, mingle

64 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

as a student with other students in the lecture halls,
make himself the assiduous disciple of such teachers
as he esteemed most highly. He regularly frequented
the laboratory of the neurologist, Van Genuchten,
and followed the lectures of the chemist, Paul
Henry, as well as those of the mathematician, Paul
Mansion.

In this way the methods of empirical scientists
became familiar to him. He gained experience in
evaluating the facts on which they based their the-
ories; while his own philosophical training enabled
him to pass judgment on the accuracy of their induc-
tions and sometimes to halt or rectify them. He was
soon accepted by these men as a co-worker in their
particular fields of experimental science. In his own
realm of metaphysical speculation, Canon Mercier,
as was natural, towered above them all.

*

More intimately personal qualities doubtless ex-
plain the ascendancy which he enjoyed from the very
first and continued to hold for a quarter of a cen-
tury at Louvain. Nothing ever troubled the serenity
of that priestly soul which was ever unruffled, which
was always so pliant before the various situations
of daily life as to meet them all with tranquillity.
An inner sternness of temperament never went with-
out a friendly smile which expressed inward peace,
a fundamental good-will to all men. Canon Mer-

CHAIR AND CANONICATE

cier's firmness was tempered with unfailing tact.
Even when he had made a decision, he resorted for
its execution less to the use of his authority than to
the arts of the psychologist and the diplomat. No
one excelled him in those sagacities of the heart,
those attentions, big and little, which are the stuff
of friendship. In that aristocracy of amiableness
which arises in every society of souls, Canon Mer-
cier was born prince and sovereign.

One of Canon Mercier's former students, M.
Passelecq, thus summarizes the impressions he gath-
ered of his master during his years of study at Lou-
vain:

"The charm of intercourse with Mercier is a
matter of every moment, of every occasion. The
secret of it is hard to analyze : it is a blend, perhaps,
of kindness, gentleness, f orgetfulness of self, of can-
dor, considerateness, uprightness. His manner is so
accurately adapted to one's susceptibilities, it is
enveloped in such perfect graciousness, suffused with
such obvious understanding, that you are captivated
before you are really aware of it: but once made
prisoner thus by surprise you never ask your freedom
back again !

"Whenever Canon Mercier had an opportunity
to encourage a student's first timid advance toward
truth, he seized upon it with affectionate joy. His
procedure at oral examinations was characteristic.

66 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

His broad forehead slightly wrinkled, his eyes fixed
in the image of kindliness upon the candidate's, he
seemed to be trying to reach the bottom of the young
man's heart, to help in the birth of an idea there and
to guide its first emergence into being. He would
listen attentively, as though stalking the slightest
particle of truth. If he had the happiness (for him
it was happiness) to discern some trace of it, he
would leap upon it, unwrap it from its swaddles,
complete it, define it, leaving the student in the end
with the impression that he had still a great deal to
learn but that he was no longer altogether ignorant.
And having passed the first stage with the profes-
sor's help, the student felt that he would be able
to traverse the remaining ones by himself.

"Canon Mercier's magnetism as a teacher was
only the expression of his unremitting interest in
men, the visible sign of a deep-grounded habit of
giving the best that was in him to every one. He
once observed, in comment on his popularity with
students : 'There is one compliment which my con-
science allows me to accept and which none of my
former students, I believe, has ever withheld from
me; namely that, in spite of my many defects and
perversities, I have always, ardently and without
distinction of persons, been fond of young men. Is it
surprising then that one of my great ambitions is to
be loved by them in return?' "

CHAIR AND CANON. ICATE 67

That ambition he cherished in that early period
of his life, and it was gratified with ever greater and
sweeter fullness as more and more the splendor of
his heart shed its attractive light upon his compe-
tence as a scholar.

*

Assuming, at the beginning of his work, that he
would be a voice crying in the wilderness, the au-
thorities had considerately thought of providing him
with a factitious audience at least, by ordering a
certain number of the students in theology to attend
his courses. He captivated these men so completely
that they continued at his lectures with eager assidu-
ity even after lay students began flocking to him
in crowds. And most of them, sensing the holy priest
under the garb of the popular professor, begged
him to become their spiritual director.

Other friendships of greater weight began to
cheer him along his pathway in life, with promise
since lasting friendship must rest in part upon ad-
miration of enduring to the very end. Lured by
the charm of his personality as well as by the intrin-
sic interest of his courses, one of his colleagues,
Leon de Monge, regularly took a place among his
students; and the problems raised in the lectures
gave rise afterwards to friendly conversations be-
tween the two men, mutual affection gradually rip-
ening as their minds came closer together.

68 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

Sometimes, after hours of toil in his study, Canon
Mercier felt the need of physical exercise, and he
would sally forth of an afternoon with Van Genuch-
ten, along one of the many silent roads in the neigh-
borhood of the little city. From afar they would
look back upon the venerable gables of the univer-
sity, bathed in the twilight haze, buildings which for
centuries had been sheltering so many disquisitions
of the learned, so many fruitful discussions of the
ideas and problems which eternally beset and eter-
nally inspire mankind. And they would encourage
each other to carry on courageously the work left
unfinished by the men of old, to pick up the torch
that had fallen from their hands and advance it a
little farther. Scholarly conversations, these with
Van Genuchten, but conducted in the unconstrained
spirit of friendly chats, with all the expansiveness
prompted by the intimacy of the hour and by the
hopes they shared in common.

Another friendship was, if not more precious, at
least most immediately useful to Canon Mercier.
Rector Pieraerts, his former teacher at Saint-
Rombaut, had officially nominated him before the
synod of the bishops to the new chair of philosophy
at Louvain. The dean never withdrew his support.
He upheld Canon Mercier and guided him along
the thorny path he had to tread at the start. If the
young professor in part succeeded in overcoming

CHAIR AND CANONICATE 69

the diffidence felt by certain of his colleagues, it was
due to the benevolent and decisive mediation of
Dean Pieraerts.

*

This atmosphere of cordial sympathy gave Canon
Mercier courage in his work and, as occasion de-
manded, in his combats. He went on with his re-
view of medieval philosophy, and, before andiences
as delighted as amazed, evolved his demonstration
that the metaphysical system of St. Thomas fur-
nished the most satisfactory higher synthesis of all
the branches of knowledge taught at the university.

By dint of terrific application, he covered, in his
courses between the years 1882 and 1886, the whole
field of the history of philosophy. To bring greater
intensity and variety into his teaching, the series of
formal lectures was broken once a week by a period
devoted to discussions.

The professor was now sure enough of himself
to try to widen his influence and to act upon public
opinion. He had already drawn up and prepared
for printing a treatise on "Cosmology." Three long
articles written for the "Revue Catholique" on
"Mechanistic Determinism and Free Will" had im-
mediately attracted the attention of philosophers
everywhere. Finally, he had organized a flourishing
study-club, wherein a larger and larger group of
eager and enthusiastic young men began discussing

70 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

possible applications of Thomist doctrine not only
to the empirical sciences, but also to social institu-
tions.

The day had long since passed when the authori-
ties, as a favor and for the sake of appearances, had
been sending to Professor Mercier's course a few
theological students more or less reluctant to take
their plunge into the subtleties of scholasticism.
These first students had remained, to be sure. They
found their knowledge of Thomism helpful in the

*

study of theology, and they appreciated the devotion
which Canon Mercier lavished upon them. Now,
however, the growing influence of his lectures was
attested by the number of lay students he was at-
tracting and this was in line with the Pope's de-
sires ; for Leo XIII had been thinking primarily of
young men outside the Church in urging the estab-
lishment of the chair at Louvain.

After the first few months, it became apparent
to all of Canon Mercier's followers that it was not
just a matter of memorizing the doctrines of a thir-
teenth-century master. Thomist principles must be
viewed, not as points of arrival, but as points of
departure; not as limitations, but as inspirations.
The great trouble with contemporary society, as
Canon Mercier's young men were beginning to per-
ceive, was the anarchy prevailing in ideas. To rid
society of its deadly poisons, one must feed it sane

CHAIR AND CANONICATE 71

and sound concepts of life, restoring moral unity
to the world on the basis of an indisputable philoso-
phy. The Pope had suggested that such a body of
sound doctrines could be found in an ancient wisdom
coming down to them across the ages. Should they
rally to it? Canon Mercier had convinced them that
Thomism was clearly superior to the incoherent or
fantastic theories which had corrupted the modern
mind. Furthermore, they were beginning to appre-
ciate its unlimited scope and to understand that with-
out it no science could be complete, no institution se-
cure. But if this Christian philosophy, proposed by
Leo XIII as a means of reforming the modern
world, were to attain its end, it would have to pene-
trate everything everywhere : it would have to reach
out into the social sciences and mold social practices,
so as to insure prosperity in the family and peace
among the nations; it would have to invade the
natural sciences, that their discoveries might be
crowned with universal synthesis ; it should embrace
the fine arts themselves, that the noble purpose these
have in life might not be lost from view, that
they be prevented from going astray in materi-
alistic or sensualistic deviations from the true
course.

Instaurare omnla in Christo to renew all things
in a knowledge flowing from Christ ! Such was to be

72 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

the motto of Pope Pius X. It was already the prac-
tice of his predecessor.

But to rear such a gigantic edifice, even on the
limited plot of ground constituted by Belgium, could
a single artisan henceforth suffice? Cosmology, a
subject on which Professor Mercier had just made
searching studies, could not be approached without
assistance from physics and mathematics. Psychol-
ogy, to which he was now turning, depended just as
intimately on biology and other natural sciences.
Canon Mercier was to make a name for himself by
a number of original suggestions in the field of
criteriology (methodology) ; but such speculation
presupposed the data of history. If one were to
study ethics, its corollaries would have to be sought
in sociology, political economy, the sciences of gov-
ernment. In a word, all these subjects, so different
in purposes, so varying in their methods of investi-
gation, demanded specialists. Conversely, in propor-
tion as specialists in the different fields amassed their
facts, they needed a common guiding light to prompt
them to intuitions of new facts. From whatever angle
one looked at the matter, some sort of association
seemed indispensable.

Canon Mercier solicited the aid of some of his
colleagues that his work might profit by the authority
accorded them in their respective fields. But, whether
from a feeling that their philosophical preparation

CHAIR AND CANONICATE 73

was insufficient, or because they had not changed
their attitude of hostility toward the new course
imposed upon the traditional curriculum of the uni-
versity, the men to whom he appealed declined to
cooperate. Canon Mercier was obliged to fall back
upon a few of his best students. For some time he
had had his eyes on four in particular, men who had
distinguished themselves by unusual enthusiasm for
difficult researches, by their remarkable powers of
assimilation, by the funds of scientific knowledge
they had already acquired, in short, by the promise
they showed of some day becoming real masters.
Desire Nys was specially interested in the problems
of cosmology, Simon Deploige, in the social sciences.
Maurice de Wulf was working with great energy
among the scholastic authors who had written com-
mentaries on the work of St. Thomas or continua-
tions of it. Armand Thiery, physician, psychologist,
and mathematician all in one, was already far enough
advanced to teach successfully in any of those three
branches of knowledge.

Canon Mercier entrusted the teaching of the
sciences to these young men, reserving for himself
the more strictly philosophical courses.

Leo XIII was closely watching the progress of the
work undertaken at his behest. He sensed the dif-
ficulties it was beginning to meet; nor did Canon

74 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

Mercier's manner of dealing with them, his silent
courage, his humility and generosity, escape the Pon-
tiff's approving eye. He decided to encourage the
Canon's meritorious efforts by a striking expression
of papal esteem. In 1886, accordingly, acting motu
proprio, he named the young priest a chamberlain
in the pontifical household. Professor Mercier was
just thirty-five years of age. The young canon's
first reaction to this honor was more of embarrass-
ment than of delight. In September of that year he
wrote to one of his old schoolmates, the Abbe Les-
quoy:

"I thank you for your graceful congratulations.
If you only knew how ridiculous I seem to myself !
I haven't yet dared to appear in public in the pur-
ple of a monsignor."

And he added, with a touch of irreverence:
"For that I think I'll wait till Mardi gras!"
If, however, the Pope's action added luster to the
chair of "philosophy according to St. Thomas" at
Louvain, it did not make Monsignor Mercier's situa-
tion among his colleagues any easier. At this mo-
ment, too, a sad personal loss threatened to jeopard-
ize his position. Rector Pieraerts, to whom Mercier
owed, in part, the initial success of his professorship,
died in 1887. The blow fell at a most critical junc-
ture. Monsignor Mercier was on the point of launch-
ing his projert for a Higher Institute of Philoso-

CHAIR AND CANONICATE 75

phy, conceived as a sort of annex to the university.
The idea was certain to be most unpopular in Bel-
gium. No matter! When the Pope was consulted,
he applauded the idea enthusiastically; and in spite
of obstacles in prospect, regardless of the bitterness
he might arouse and the disappointments he would
be sure to encounter, Monsignor Mercier resolved,
as he was fond of saying himself, "to head front-
wards."

CHAPTER V

COMBAT

TO organize the various professorships grouped
around Monsignor Mercier's chair of philos-
ophy into a permanent institute, required another
official act on the part of Leo XIII ; and the Pope,
accordingly, made his intentions known to the Bel-
gian bishops in the month of May, 1888. The
bishops offered no opposition to the new founda-
tion and readily elected Monsignor Mercier as presi-
dent of the future institute. But their interest, for
the moment, stopped at that point. While following
Mercier's projects with a benevolent curiosity, they
foresaw that the execution of them would prove
financially burdensome, and they thought it better
to husband their resources for more immediately
urgent needs.

In November, 1889, the Pope returned to the
charge, and partially at least to overcome the major
obstacle, he donated a sum of 150,000 francs "that
a beginning might be made." Monsignor Mercier,
on his side, appealed to his former pupils, soliciting
the generous aid of all Catholics who grasped the

76

COMBAT 77

necessity of advanced studies for an adequate de-
fense of the Church. Work was started on buildings
to house the new institution following plans drawn;
by a future minister, M. Helleputte, a personal
friend of the president. Lecture halls and labora-
tories were provided for in a fine Gothic edifice,
which also contained a little chapel (a marvel of
good taste), to serve as setting for religious cere-
monies.

*

The enterprise at the time had the good wishes
and even the cooperation of the new rector, Mon-
signor Abbeloos; and, while awaiting a formal ca-
nonical charter for the dream he cherished, Mon-
signor Mercier was free to continue his scientific
labors. It was just then that he began the publica-
tion of his courses, a "Logic," an "Introduction to
Metaphysics," a "Psychology," a "Criteriology,"
following one another in rapid succession in as many
years, and receiving the applause not only of philoso-
phers who wrote in French, but of specialists the
world over (the volumes had been made available
in many languages through translations executed
by former pupils of the prelate).

But it was not enough to find money for the In-
stitute and leisure for his own work. Monsignor
Mercier had to bring home to the influential men
of his country the importance of pure science in

78 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

meeting on their own ground scientists hostile to
religion. The periodical conference of Belgian Cath-
olics opened at Malines in the month of Septem-
ber, 1891. Monsignor Mercier thought it wise to
read to that select audience a memorial on "Ad-
vanced Studies in Philosophy," and on the practical
efficacy of such studies for maintaining social equilib-
rium, as well as for the defense of the Faith. The
members of the assembly were more particularly
men of action than men of learning; all the more
reason, therefore, for emphasizing to them the in-
fluence of learning upon action, and the role which
ideas and ideals, though we do not always suspect
it, play in the leadership of mankind.

"Catholics," declared the prelate, "are now liv-
ing in isolation within the scientific world. They are
looked upon with suspicion, treated with indiffer-
ence. Their publications are hardly read outside
Catholic circles, and when they are read, they exert
no influence, they provoke no comment. We publish
important magazines in all countries. Who quotes
them? Do the Protestant or non-sectarian periodi-
cals of Italy, France, Belgium, England, Germany,
or America, ever pay any attention to what Cath-
olics say? Publicly and ex officio the clergy con-
stitutes the governing class of the Catholic Church.
But is it not a fact that everywhere, excepting with
a very few of its closer associates, our clergy is re-

COMBAT 79

garded as a body of pious, zealous, and high-minded
men, but indifferent, not to say hostile, to science?
This state of intellectual isolation on our part is a
menace both to religion and to science."

The orator then went on to suggest remedies :

"We must educate, in numbers ever greater, men
who are devoted to science for its own sake, without
vocational aims, without the direct concern of de-
fending religion, men who will work at first hand to
assemble materials for the edifice of science and who
will contribute to the progressive erection of that
edifice. The task of creating the resources which
such work requires is the goal to be held in view
to-day by all who are concerned for the prestige of
the Church and its efficacious action upon the souls
of men. . . ."

In support of his thesis the promoter of the in-
stitute quoted the authoritative words of the Pope:

"It is necessary, as the great Leo XIII says, 'that
we should have investigators and teachers working
in all the various domains of knowledge, men who
by their activity, by their accomplishments, will win
the right to speak to the scientific world and compel
attention. Then, when we meet the eternal objection
that blind faith, that faith in any form, is incompati-
ble with science, we shall make answer, not with ab-
stract arguments, not with volumes of erudition, not
with appeals to the past: we shall make answer with

8o A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

the evidence of living facts, visible to the eye in the
present.' "

But to obtain such results, "association must make
up for the insufficiency of the isolated worker. Men
of analysis and men of synthesis must get together
to create, by virtue of their daily contact and their
joint action, an atmosphere favorable to the har-
monious development of science and philosophy."
Hence the undebatable usefulness of the new in-
stitute.

This was a straightforward presentation of the
problem of advanced philosophical education to
the leading Catholics of Belgium. Monsignor Mer-
cier hoped to sow in their minds ideas that would
aid the future of Christianity in Belgium and
throughout the world. He hoped, also, to gain pupils
and resources for his own work. As for the finan-
cial aspects of the matter, no argument could be
so strong as the picture of an organization already
functioning and asking merely for the means to
grow in stability and efficiency. Monsignor Mercier
was glad to explain the arrangement of courses in
the new school:

"The complete course of studies in the Institute
offers facilities for three, and, in the cases of stu-
dents with special aptitudes, for four, years of
work. The prerequisite for admission is the com-
pletion of preliminary studies for degrees in the

COMBAT 8l

sciences, or in philosophy, or in theology. At the be-
ginning of the second year the student, while still
attending general courses, chooses a specialty in
which he can give free rein to personal aptitudes or
preferences; he enrolls in one of the sections, of
which there are three: one for the physical and
mathematical sciences, a second for the biological
sciences, a third for the social and political sciences.
This combination seems to avoid the double danger
of old-fashioned encyclopedism on the one hand,
and excessive speculation on the other."

Notwithstanding the lofty tone of this memorial
which might have seemed over the heads of some
people, it was understood and highly approved.
Pupils came in greater numbers, and the money
necessary to complete buildings and to provide
equipment, in some cases very costly, was not lack-
ing.

A final charter had not yet been obtained from
the Pope among other perplexing problems, it
was necessary to determine the official relations of
the new institute with the older university. The
former was to remain a branch of the latter, and
at the same time to live, in large measure, a life of
its own. The adjustment was a delicate one, re-
quiring careful thought and involving many delays.
The drafting of the statutes of the new foundation
took more than three years. Fortunately the long

82 A LIFE OF. CARDINAL MERCIER

wait did not interfere at all with busy activity about
the growing hive. It was during this period, per-
haps, that Monsignor Mercier, now in possession
of his full powers and still free from the cruel cares
that were soon to beset him, did his finest work as
a teacher of young men.

Other details recorded by M. Passelecq, his for-
mer pupil, show the impression he made at that
time upon his students :

"Monsignor Mercier is a very tall man, and the
effect of height is accentuated by his extraordinary
leanness. He has a small, bony head, the cheeks
sunken, as though to give greater relief to his ex-
pression of kindliness. His lips are always parted
in a smile. A smile, too, in his eyes at all times !
Perhaps the most conspicuous feature of this 'hu-
man frame so tall, and so frail, the crown and key
as it were to the architecture of the whole edifice,
is a fine, broad, open forehead, the ideal brow one
would conceive to house a strong and industrious
brain. When you see Monsignor Mercier for the
first time, it is that vast, prominent, luminous fore-
head which first strikes your eye; but, if the inter-
view be prolonged ever so little, it is 'his smile and
the expression of his eyes that you carry away, his
eyes especially, exceedingly bright, attentive, benev-
olent eyes. They rest upon you at once, and glow

COMBAT 83

upon you like the soft, steady; light of a study-
lamp.

"The students of the university, who liked to
point their shafts of wit with a barb of irreverence,
invented a slightly acid nickname to sum up the
effect their teacher of philosophy made upon them ;
they referred to him among themselves as the
'Grand Sympathique' (Very likable, 5 also 'spinal
nerve') and the pun (rather flat as puns will be)
hit the nail on the head.

"In his lectures Monsignor Mercier excelled in
precision and up-to-dateness. There was nothing
trite, nothing stereotyped about his eminent mind.
Even the axioms of medieval wisdom he rethought
and relived before restating them; he presented
them only when they had been translated into
modern terms, or expanded into modern analogies.
Faithful to the spirit of Aristotle, St. Thomas,
and the scholastics of the golden age, he was careful
to put his students on guard against ever allowing
respect for tradition and authority to lead to in-
tellectual servitude. He himself, in his general con-
ception of philosophy, manifested an acute aware-
ness of the need for progress.

"He was at his best, as his writings show, in
bringing out the significant, the contemporary, as-
pects of all permanent philosophical truths; in ap-
proaching them by their particular connections or

84 A LIFE OF, CARDINAL MERCIER

coincidences with ideas and problems of the pres-
ent time. Incessantly permeating the ancient prin-
ciple with his personal thought, he made philosophy
a living force, and, in a certain sense, an emotional
experience.

"The lectures of the professor had an extraor-
dinary hold upon the minds of his auditors. Very
few of his students, moreover, failed of opportunity
to put his intellectual generosity to personal test,
to have personal experience of his infinite patience
and readiness to help, whether in chance meetings,
or in those intimate conversations in his study in
which Monsignor Mercier loved to individualize his
lessons and fertilize the seeds they had left in a
student's mind by friendly counsel or suggestion.
.Very few professors at our alma mater took
greater part than he in the group life of the stu-
dents. And since, meantime, Monsignor Mercier
was as much esteemed by most of his colleagues as
he was loved by his students, it is not at all diffi-
cult to understand the very special enthusiasm of
which he was the object at that time."

**

In founding the Institute of Philosophy at Lou-
vain, the Pope had had particularly in view a
soundly Christian training for young laymen who
would eventually occupy influential positions in Bel-
gium and other countries. As a matter of fact, lay

COMBAT

students were now in the majority in the various
courses of the institute, while young clerics were
becoming correspondingly rare. Monsignor Mercier,
for his part, had zealously devoted the first years
of his manhood to the education of priests at the
Petit-Seminaire of Malines, and he was now not
easily consolable at being no longer actively en-
gaged in preparation for the clergy. Leo XIII had
no objection to this attitude. Fully conscious of the
advantages offered by scholasticism as a prepara-
tion for theology, he was anxious to procure for
Monsignor Mercier a greater number of ecclesias-
tical students ; and he stood on watch for an oppor-
tunity to do so.

But how recruit seminarists or young priests for
the institute? If a certain number of clerics might
well be encouraged to go on to a doctorate in theol-
ogy at the university, the studies required for that
'degree were already onerous enough without any
one's thinking of adding to them an extra period of
three or four years in the Institute of Philosophy.
Confronted by this difficulty, Monsignor Mercier
thought of requesting the bishops to send to Lou-
yain the most gifted students following courses in
philosophy in the lower seminaries. He would
undertake to complete their training in a special
institute which he would supervise personally. Mean-
time he would be giving them an introduction to ad-

86 A LIFE OF. CARDINAL MERCIER

yanced philosophy which would enable them after-
wards to follow courses in theology to better
advantage either in the higher seminaries or at
the university. It was objected that the plan would
tend to diminish the control exercised by the bishops
over members of their dioceses and would skim the
cream from the classes in philosophy in lower
seminaries. The Pope, however, had seized upon
the idea joyfully. As he had formerly done for the
chair of Thomist philosophy, he now assumed re-
sponsibility for this new institute.

So, on July 27, in the year 1892, while Monsignor
Mercier was in attendance at the annual meeting
of the bishops held in Malines to consider affairs of
the University of Louvain, the papal nuncio, Mon-
signor Nava di Bontife, delivered a pontifical letter
that was addressed to him personally. In the docu-
ment Leo XIII congratulated the prelate on his
plan and urged him to put it into execution forth-
with.

But, having taken cognizance of the letter, the
bishops were once more faced with the material
difficulties of the enterprise; and since, moreover,
the letter was not addressed directly to them, they
were not called upon to take action. Monsignor
Mercier returned to Louvain in high honor from
the Pope's new expressions of interest in him, but
no better off as to means for bringing his dreams

COMBAT 87

to pass. He had to bide his time for the moment.

Meanwhile, the work in progress at the Institute
of Philosophy was meeting with more and more
favor in learned circles. Buildings for the different
departments were now ready. The time had come
for the official chartering of the new institution,
which the Pope proclaimed in a pontifical letter
dated March 7, 1894, and published at the time
the new buildings were dedicated. This brief granted
important privileges to the institute, in particular
that of conferring canonical degrees on students in
philosophy a startling recognition of Monsignor
Mercier's arduous, unwearied and, for the most
part, lonely exertions in support of the Pope's in-
tellectual policies.

Mercier himself seemed to have reached the apex
of his apostolate and of his influence. To prepare
for future struggles priests as eminent in learning
as in character; to throw the light of Christian
truth upon all forms of social activity; to provide
at last a solid foundation for institutions which had
been growing up in all countries on false principles,
and had been threatening to collapse ever since the
French Revolution what a wonderful task I And
to a priest, a plain priest barely past his fortieth
year, the Pope had entrusted, in the domain of
ideas, the accomplishment of his projects for the
reformation and the progress of society!

A LIFE OF CARDINAL 1 MERCIER

Such missions are usually performed only at the
cost of bitter sufferings, which must be accepted as
the price to be paid for success. Successful Mon-
signor Mercier had been almost invariably, and de-
spite unavoidable difficulties, in everything he had
so far undertaken. His incessant toil and his devo-
tion to the spiritual welfare of others had been re-
warded by universal esteem and affection. The joys
of greater and greater progress in knowledge, an
accumulation of honors, unlimited confidence from
the head of the Church these had come one after
the other to compensate him for his untiring labors
and his utter forgetfulness of self. But he had not
as yet "borne witness with blood" he had still to
follow along the Via Dolorosa the footsteps of Him
who offered His life as a sacrifice to Truth!

The Pope's concession of various privileges to
the Institute of Philosophy soon led to strained re-
lations between the rector of the university and the
president of the institute. The power of conferring
degrees, in particular, seemed to make Monsignor
Mercier's creation, though in theory it was still at-
tached to the greater university body, an independ-
ent organism, a sort of state within a state. And
the enormous sums spent on the new foundation
were they not monies taken from the older institu-
tion, left just that much the poorer?

Believing himself (without doubt sincerely) to

COMBAT

be acting in the best interests of his own charge,
Monsignor Abbeloos, who had maintained friendly
relations with his colleague hitherto, now began to
show signs of ill-humor. Certain professors found
that Monsignor Mercier's courses were drawing
students away from their own; and they seized the
opportunity to vent their own spleen, even going so
far as to express rather sharp criticism of these
neo-Thomist doctrines which were being forced
upon the admiration of the world.

In the first place, did this new movement really
correspond to the spirit of the encyclical Mterni
Patrls? The Pope had, it is true, asked that Catho-
lic principles be so used that the physical and natural
sciences "might be made to produce all the results
of which they were capable." But had he meant
that, under cover of a Christian philosophy, the
empirical sciences should be forced upon Catholics
at so considerable a cost? Philosophy, no doubt,
meant a deeper understanding of the knowledge de-
rived from observation; but common or ordinary
observation was meant the old scholastics knew
no other kind. Why, then, all this scientific erudi-
tion, which could be cultivated only at a sacrifice
of a truly philosophical training? Why, moreover,
this disrespect for Latin, the traditional language of
the Church and of science, in favor of French, a
tongue unknown to a part of the Belgian people, in

90 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

fact, an object of deep-seated antipathies in certain
sections of the country?

Echoes of these complaints frequently made their
way into the episcopal residences. The bishops had
not viewed the revival of Thomist thought with any
great enthusiasm. They were quite ready to listen
to recriminations. They had as yet no personal feel-
ing in the matter, but they were not loath to admit
that where there was so much smoke there must
be some fire.

The phrasing of certain articles in the charter of
the Institute of Philosophy now began to give rise
to unfortunate misunderstandings. The main lines
of the project had been arranged with Leo XIII
verbally. The offices of the Congregation of Studies,
at Rome, influenced perhaps by interests hostile to
Monsignor Mercier, substantially modified mean-
ings and tendencies, not without jeopardizing the
success of Thomist instruction and endangering the
peace that it was so desirable to reestablish at Lou-
vain. Mercier endeavored to have the offending ar-
ticles amended. But his adversaries then accused him
of trying to betray the Pope's thought. His conduct
and his policies were reported to the Pope in so
disfigured and distorted a form that Leo XIII al-
lowed it to transpire, by unmistakable signs, that
his confidence in Monsignor Mercier was shaken.
Writing in the Pope's name, Cardinal Mazella ad-

COMBAT 91

dressed a sharply worded letter to the president of
the Institute of Philosophy. The latter should hence-
forth be subordinate to the rector of the university !
Instruction in his establishment should be given in
Latin! In the event of non-compliance with these
orders, provisions would be taken for changes in
personnel! The letter containing these reprimands
was itself to be distributed, at the end of the aca-
demic year, to all the professors of the university!

Monsignor JVtercier set out at once for Rome in
order to present his side of the case. But enemies
preceded him there, followed him from place to
place, preoccupied all the approaches to the seats
of power; and they did not rest till they had per-
suaded His Holiness to withdraw the privilege of
granting degrees from the institute which he him-
self had just founded.

After the brilliant favor he had enjoyed, this
meant evident disavowal and censure for Monsi-
gnor Mercier. For the work he had so laboriously
built up, it signified collapse. So at least every one
supposed. Indeed, with a view to his expected resig-
nation, a curacy in the city of Brussels was indirectly
suggested to him in the year 1896.

But this was to underestimate Monsignor Mer-
cier's indomitable energy. Alone, saddened, by no
means beaten, he returned to Louvain to take up his
work again. He was received there with the coolness

92 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

usually extended to fallen favorites. A report had
spread abroad that, the Pope having now with-
drawn his support from the Institute of Philosophy,
the school had absolutely no future. This was enough
to scatter the students to the four winds. When
Mercier and his professors now went to their lec-
ture hours, they found themselves speaking in virtu-
ally empty halls.

A few students nevertheless remained, "trusting
in Providence for a return of justice." The four
professors trained by Monsignor Mercier, Nys, De
Wulf, Deploige, and Thiery, also decided to stand
by their master to the end. This little group went
quietly about the usual tasks as though no squall had
ever troubled the peaceful horizon.

o

Lavishing more care than ever on the lectures he
delivered to the few pupils left in his courses, Mon-
signor Mercier also began to prepare new editions
of his books and to come closer to former students
of Louvain who were preparing translations of
them in various countries. The "Revue Neo-scholas-
tique," recently founded as a clearing-house for the
Thomists scattered about the Old World and the
New, saw its influence widening, thanks to more ac-
tive and more intelligent advertisement. From
thinkers everywhere, even from philosophers who
did not hold Catholic beliefs, came more and more

COMBAT 93

numerous evidences of an esteem so real and so im-
pressive as to show that the neo-Thomist movement
was continually gaining in depth and in efficacy. The
man whom every one had considered crushed was
calmer, more resolute, more up-and-doing than ever.
In the campus jargon of Louvain the "Grand Sym-
pathique" had now become "His Sereneness."

For two years Monsignor Mercier was to know
all the bitterness of toiling without encouragement,
without the support of superiors, with nothing to
keep him steadfast except the vision of a great work
to be saved. At no moment in his life does he offer
a more inspiring sight never are we better able
to see those eminent personal qualities which help us
to understand the secret of his world-wide influ-
ence. One of his disciples of that period, M. Van
Cauwelaert, has portrayed him as he appeared dur-
ing those years of silence and humiliation, in terms
which reveal the intimate virtues of the man and
the priest and explain the teacher of those days as
they explain, later on, the bishop.

"I believe," says this former student, "that Mon-
signor Mercier's great power lay in the lofty con-
science that ruled his acts and which may be defined
in two words : self-knowledge and self-control. Will,
love, intelligence these three : a will that was mas-
ter absolute of his physical organism, but was itself
impelled by a love that soared toward the summits,

94 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

each beat of its pinions guided by a rational view
of things. This was Mercier in a nutshell. His life
might well be described as a paragraph of Thomist
ethics in action.

"The freedom of his spirit was stamped on his
features as on a printed page. He was one of those
men whose character could be read from his physical
make-up. An oval face, the brow marked by ener-
getic lines; the profile finely drawn, with a certain
ascetic cast; soft, peaceful, but penetrating eyes; the
hair thin rather than not; hands long and delicate
that opened in quiet gesture to stress his words; a
tall figure that stooped a little rather from fatigue
than from years : it suggested force, on the whole
a commanding figure, but so radiant with amenity
at the same time, that we, young students newly ar-
rived in Louvain, would turn to him instinctively
for help in all sorts of troubles, never pausing to
consider that we were thus robbing a precious life
of inestimably precious moments. Such the physical
aspect of the man.

"Mercier was a model of kindness. To forget him-
self, to wear himself out in an incessant effort to
spread joy about him, were always prime needs of
his spirit. I remember touching examples of his
generosity with money. He gave as though he were
rich; he gave till nothing was left to him but pov-
erty. But he was just as reckless, just as generous,

COMBAT

just as much a spendthrift, with his time. So long
as he thought he was helping others, he called no
moment his own. He was actual confessor to many
young ecclesiastical students and to not a few lay-
men also ; but one could never count those to whom
he acted as counselor, guide, and friend. His pupils
often took undue advantage of his kindness. He had
regular office hours posted on a bulletin-board. But
we all thought we were on sufficiently intimate terms
with the master, we all thought our personal cases
interesting enough, to justify us at any time in slip-
ping past the janitor and dashing up the stairs
that led to his hospitable door., I am ashamed to
say that I often abused his complaisance in this way
myself. But it was not only students. People not con-
nected with the university, priests, nuns, men and
women of all rank and station, thought themselves
free to waste his time by carrying to him their prob-
lems, their grievances, their ambitions and desires
and sometimes for what petty things!

"He confessed to me on one occasion that during
the whole week preceding he had had just two hours
for undisturbed study. And when, sympathizing with
the distress that this must have caused him, and ex-
pressing my regret that he was not left leisure to
complete and publish so many works impatiently
awaited by scholars, I ventured to criticize the
thoughtlessness of these intruders, Monsignor Mer-

96 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

cier merely smiled. Once in a long while he would
bring himself to closing his door and locking it.
And sometimes, too, when he felt completely over-
whelmed, he would take refuge in a modest cottage
he had bought at L'Hermite near Waterloo.

"We used to admire Monsignor Mercier's sim-
plicity and humility. As a rule he wore no outward
sign of his high honors in the Church. It was a
real pleasure for him to go walking with his stu-
dents about the gardens of the institute and to par-
take of their modest repasts.

"A characteristic trait of truly humble persons is
that they will permit their inferiors to find fault
with their work. I remember how embarrassed I
was when Monsignor Mercier begged me, during
my first year at the institute, to call his attention
to anything in his lectures or in his books that ap-
peared to me to be in need of correction. The same
request he often mlade of others.

"Another striking aspect of his personality was
his desire for continual improvement. I do not be-
lieve Monsignor Mercier was ever satisfied with
any of his books in the form in which urgent needs
of his courses or of his philosophical controversies
obliged him to publish them. In his opinion, they
were always hurried, always premature. It is said
that during his years of teaching in Malines ( 1877
1882) he tore up his manuscripts at the end of each

COMBAT 97

year to oblige himself to work over all his mate-
rials from beginning to end. In successive editions
of his books, scarcely any traces are to be found of
the preceding texts.

"Monsignor Mercier liked people, he loved them
profoundly. He was, moreover, a judge of men and
an educator. He would talk with you, and, the first
time, he would seem to be observing you hardly at
all; but all the while he would be forming his esti-
mate of you, from the intonations of your voice, the
way you formed your sentences, the expression in
your eyes, your manner and carriage. I doubt
whether in all Belgium there was any one who bet-
ter understood the art of attracting, holding, and
guiding young men. He must have had that faculty
in his blood. Whenever I try to visualize Monsignor
Mercier, I have to picture him among students, es-
pecially among the students at the institute. That
work was something that appealed to his heart. No
professor at the University of Louvain ever won
more love and respect than he; and the faithful
disciples who went forth in such goodly number
from the institute in the twenty-five years of his
work there remained attached to him heart and
soul.

"Monsignor Mercier was always on watch for
the promise that youth held within itself. The edu-
cation that he gave followed the plan by which he

A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

had fashioned his own soul. His great aim was to
make strong men of his students. But he regarded
self-control and an awakened sense of responsibil-
ity as more salutary for the young than a timid pru-
dence which too often stifled initiative. He preached
a sanctification that would be attained rather by
works than by renunciations. He was convinced that
the man who really loves the Good and fills his days
with labor will naturally avoid Evil. That accounted
for the atmosphere of hard and intense application
which prevailed at the institute, even, perhaps, to
excess; for not a few students broke down under
the strain."

*

This attitude of humble, courageous abnegation
on the part of the man whom he had once be-
friended and who had now dropped wholly from
view was bound in the end to make an impression
on Leo XIII. Despite the complaints which had done
the young prelate so much mischief, the Pope could
not fail to recognize in him a noble servant of the
Church. Mercier had been doggedly prosecuting a
hard, ungrateful task, confident that ultimately, in
spite of everything, the actual facts would come to
the Pope's ear. Leo XIII had observed with keen
satisfaction that new centers of Thomism kept
springing up in various countries and that they were
founded by former students of Louvain. He could

COMBAT 99

see that the use of French, whether in books or in
oral instruction, had been in all cases the best means
of promoting the dissemination of his favorite doc-
trines. And in that exalted sense of fairness for
which he was known, he began to seek ways and
means for ending a painful situation which he felt
also to be unjust.

Cardinal Mazella, the prefect of the Congrega-
tion of Studies, had taken such a positive stand
against Monsignor Mercier that he could hardly
be asked to reverse himself. Mazella, however, died
in the year 1898, and Leo XIII at once ordered
Cardinal Satolli, the new prefect of the congrega-
tion, to reexamine the papers relating to the Lou-
vain Institute. Once more, but this time in an at-
mosphere free from excitement and with no great
play of hostile influences, Monsignor Mercier's acts
were subjected to a painstaking and enlightened re-
view ; and (among the documents was found a mem-
orandum which contained the prelate's justification
of himself. As he read this brief, and recalled the
many accusations made against Mercier, the Pope
was heard to exclaim in a tone of regret and of af-
fectionate esteem:

"We have been misinformed !"

The words spelled rehabilitation for the institute
and for its president. Pope Leo shortly despatched
Monsignor Vincenzo Vannutelli to Louvain bearing

100 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

a letter from Cardinal Satolli. The missive con-
tained express approbation of Monsignor Mer-
cier's methods and aims, and permission to make
ample use of French in the teaching of Thomism.
Relations between the rector of the university and
the president of the Institute of Philosophy were,
however, still strained. The Pope asked Monsignor
Abbeloos for his resignation. He was determined
that the work for Thomism should be put on a last-
ing basis at all costs. A new era of prosperity opened
for Monsignor Mercier's institute; and it was to
meet with no eclipse until the aged pontiff's death.
In the year 1900 a delegation of teachers and stu-
dents from Louvain went to Rome, to bear the hom-
age of the institute to Leo XIII. In the public audi-
ence granted on that occasion the Pope said:

"I am glad to see at your head the professors of
the Institute of Philosophy which I founded. The
advanced studies pursued under Monsignor Mer-
cier's direction are of service not only to the clergy.
They are just as valuable to lay students who come
to your institute to study philosophy, even though
they may have taken degrees elsewhere. I am think-
ing, for example, of de Lantsheere, who has just
been elected to the Belgian Chamber. That is why,
though insisting that the philosophy of St. Thomas
be studied in Latin, we have decreed that the lee-

COMBAT 101

tures should be given in French. My desire and my
prayers are for the prosperity of my institute."

"The institute which I founded," "my institute !"
These words of the Pope indicated an undeniable
return of Monsignor Mercier to favor. His adver-
saries had failed. Not only that : in trying to injure
him, they had made him; the trials to which he had
been subjected had molded him into an ideal scholar
and a saintly priest, creating and developing quali-
ties which would shortly be making him equal to the
most unforeseen and most redoubtable tasks.

CHAPTER VI

THE MIRACLE

IN thinking of an ecclesiastical seminary as an
annex to his Institute of Philosophy, Mon-
signor Mercier had been seeking above all else some
means of gratifying the imperious vocation he felt
for his true career as an educator of the clergy. We
have already seen how many obstacles beset his
project in the beginning. Though he had obtained
the Pope's approval, he had not won the bishops,
nor the university. He could see that the problem
of finding students would be a difficult one to solve.

Among the bishops, however, he had two friends
in particular Cardinal Goossens of Malines and his
old teacher, Monsignor du Rousseaux. Those prel-
ates decided to send him a few of the best students
in their lower seminaries. Cautiously and diffi-
dently a few others followed. At the opening of the
school year in the month of October, 1892, the total
enrollment was seven. Monsignor Mercier deter-
mined to begin work.

The first task was to find suitable quarters for
the new community. At his wits' end, the president

102

THE MIRACLE 103

finally rented the vacant wing of a building belong-
ing to the Missionaries of the Scheldt. There he
could arrange for a very modest apartment for him-
self, and perhaps half a dozen cells for the students.

As a professor at the university, he had hitherto
been occupying a spacious and cosily furnished house.
This tranquil abode, which must have been very
alluring to a man of literary pursuits, he decided to
abandon at an (age when people are, as a rule, spe-
cially sensitive to external comforts; and he moved
into a badly appointed and often noisy building, with
the prospect of having to undergo all the privations
and face tell the embarrassments inseparable from
public or semi-public institutions. In this, to be sure,
he was yielding to an impulse stronger in his nature
than any consideration of comfort, "having always
dreamed," as he himself said, "of passing my life
and ending my days among young men preparing for
the ministry of Christ."

The inconveniences of a haphazard "plant" were
to be felt there, indeed, for a long time. There was
no chapel in the establishment, no "office" for the
president other than the common living-room. His
private "dining-room" was a seat at the table of the
other students in the general refectory. What fur-
niture there was came from his former residence.
Being still the sole incumbent of the chair of Tho-
mist philosophy at Louvain, Monsignor Mercier

104 A LJFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

could not personally attend to all the details of in-
stallation. He employed a priest of the parish to
help him set things in order. The worthy cleric in
question seemed to infer that in accordance with the
Aristotelian principles held in such honor in the
house everything should be arranged by categories.
On returning one evening from a lecture, the presi-
dent found in one cell all the beds, in another all the
desks, in a third all the wardrobes. He was com-
pelled to look for some other steward who would
not be so preoccupied with the "Arbor Porphyri."
The young seminary began its life among just such
embarrassments, which were, for that matter, the
theme of unending mirth.

To provide good discipline in his house from the
start and assure himself a relative degree of quiet,
Monsignor Mercier might at once have drawn up a
"rule" and judged his students by the way they ob-
served it. He thought it wiser to let experience dic-
tate such permanent regulations and for the time be-
ing to trust to personal example and suggestion to
keep his young charges to the path of duty. He
thought a body of customs would gradually form
from the exigencies of daily life; and such a "rule"
would find its legitimacy in the conscience and the
common sense of the students.

Relations between the prelate and his young men

THEMIRACLE. 105

were most simple and cordial from the outset. He
ate at the same table with them, and thus gained
the double advantage of being able to show them
his affectionate personal interest and to teach them
dignified manners. The first part of each meal was
devoted to reading aloud; during a second period
talk became general, with special encouragement for
discussion of the current affairs of the institute.
Monsignor Mercier listened attentively to the opin-
ions of the boys and even asked them for their ad-
vice as occasion presented itself. If there was any
great difference of opinion among them, he had
them settle it by a show of hands. "Let's vote, let's
vote!" the seminarists would cry, and the prelate
would good-naturedly accept the opinion of the ma-
jority, unless, of course, he saw some material ob-
jection to so doing. This sort of government could
not continue as the community grew larger as
early as the second year it had to be abandoned.
But traces of it always remained in the institution
a spirit of filial, almost childish, trust in the man
who placed so much trust in others, and less as a
device of diplomacy than as a need of his boundless
good nature.

Cardinal Goossens, as was noted above, was
keenly interested in the Mercier enterprise ; and one
day he paid a visit to the new-born community.
Afternoon tea was served in the refectory. With the

106 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

greatest simplicity and naturalness in the world,
Monsignor Mercier showed this prince of the
Church to a chair in the midst of the little group of
students. What could the cardinal have thought of
such a thing? No one in the seminary knew, but the
young men were infinitely grateful to their principal
for such an honor.

Each day saw the bonds between him and his
future priests grow tighter. Monsignor Mercier had
undertaken to form characters by a constant appeal
to conscience. The method demonstrated its worth
in excellent results. The affection the seminarists felt
for the man they addressed as "Monseigneur," but
venerated as a parent, sought all possible opportuni-
ties for expression the recurrence of his birthday
was one of them. And Monsignor Mercier liked
such unpretentious celebrations. For him they were
occasions for some of those delightful "toasts" of
his, little speeches of infinite subtlety and charm, in
which he found a way to introduce suggestions as
profitable in substance as they were pleasant in form.
And their effect was to be measured not only in the
joyous smiles that overspread the faces about him,
but as well in the enthusiasm for the noble cause
they were serving that flamed in all hearts. Twelfth
Night and, shortly, the anniversaries of certain
events in the history of the seminary, were cele-
brated in the same modest way. But Monsignor

THE MIRACLE 107

Mercier refused to monopolize such expressions of
esteem. He had appointed the Abbe Simons, a recent
graduate of the university, as his assistant at the in-
stitution with the title of Assistant Regent. Not
satisfied with showing the most considerate defer-
ence to Abbe Simons on all occasions, Monsignor
Mercier insisted that the young instructor's birth-
day be celebrated each year with the same cere-
monies as his own, not only to do public honor to
the devotion of a humble colleague, but to win for
him the same affectionate respect that he himself en-
joyed. This little trait was but one of the many pri-
vate and daily manifestations of that high-minded-
ness which public events were later to reveal so
strikingly.

Such considerateness was not confined to the
young priest who helped him. Each of the semi-
narists in turn was the object of some similar solici-
tude. He treated them all with the most exquisite
thoughtfulness. Though his own moments were so
precious, the -eminent prelate listened with smiling
patience to the youthful, often naive, suggestions
the students made in connection with their studies.
He received everybody his door was never locked
and the student always went away from the con-
ference with the impression that he had been listened
to with as much deference as a doctor of the Sor-

108 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

bonne. To one of the young men he said one day:
"I see you are giving a lecture this evening at the
Philosophy Club. I am sorry that I am not free. I
should like to hear what you have to say about
poetry. I have always wanted to know more about
the real secret of its charm."

And the remark was not mere encouragement
its humility was as sincere as its phrasing was simple.
Such modesty, combined with unfailing concern for
the feelings of others, was translated, whenever an
occasion offered, from words into deeds. It was a
tradition at the seminary that vespers on Church
holidays should be celebrated by the prelate himself.
One day, the festival of the Purification, the priest
who had been officiating for that week (one of the
few ordained clergymen who ever resided in the
house) forgot this custom, went to the sacristy, and
donned his ceremonial garments. A moment before
the hour set for the service, Monsignor Mercier
opened the door, saw the priest already garbed, and
withdrew without being seen.

He lavished an almost maternal care upon his
pupils. Knowing well how hard they had to work
during the week in preparation for their university
courses, he forbade them to study at all on Sun-
days. Just before the long vacations he would invite
them one by one to his room and ask them as a favor
to write to him. One year it chanced that he was not

THE MIRACLE 109

able as usual to take this personal leave of them.
He stopped, on the last morning, after the gospel in
the mass, and in a few touching words bade them
affectionate adieu. But in all this benevolence there
was no tendency on Monsignor Mercier's part to
spoil his charges with sentimentalities. He was a
foe of the university policy of allowing full liberty
to students, especially to students for the priesthood.
Smoking, for example, he permitted only as a rare
exception. He was utterly opposed to what he called
"college morals," and any one who seemed to be
tempted in that direction was reprimanded with such
severity that discipline was always maintained in the
seminary with a fear tempered with reverence.

Between the years 1892 and 1895, it will be re-
membered, a severe epidemic of influenza counted
numerous victims in all the countries of Europe.
Although the disease was not particularly danger-
ous to young people, it was nevertheless a disquiet-
ing peril to every one. It made its way into the little
community at Louvain. No nurses were available;
so the prelate himself manned the breach, going
about from bed to bed, a bottle of medicine in his
hand, but contributing almost as much by his bright-
ness and cheerfulness of spirit to combat the epi-
demic.

A survivor of those distant years recently wrote :
"I have scarcely laid eyes on Monsignor Mercier

110 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

since the day when circumstances forced me to leave
Louvain; but the memory of the incomparable mas-
ter has never once deserted me."

A tempest as terrible as it was unexpected was
shortly to disperse this little group of students. The
same events which all but destroyed Monsignor
Mercier's Institute of Philosophy also shook the
new seminary. The bishops called home their
charges and most of the other boys were summoned
by their parents to leave the pleasant environment
where they had found life so agreeable under the
direction of a saintly priest now fallen under sus-
picion. A few, however, remained. The annual open-
ings never failed to take place at the prescribed date
though sometimes there were only three or four
students.

In this dolorous situation Monsignor Mercier
placed himself wholly "in the hands of God," with a
serenity and a self-control which once more excited
the admiration of his associates. One word spoken
in the intimacy of the seminary where he enjoyed
such ascendancy would sometimes have sufficed to
correct, at least in the minds of his own students,
certain misapprehensions which were injuring his
prestige. That word he never uttered, partly out of
a scruple of humility, partly out of an impulse of
superhuman charity.

THE MIRACLE III

One day a document issued by a Roman Congre-
gation arrived in Belgium. It dealt in a tone most
mortifying for Monsignor Mercier with the place
which a Higher Institute of Philosophy should oc-
cupy in the organization of ,a university. Not only
was it published in the newspapers without warning
to him; it became the talk of all society in the capi-
tal before he learned by chance of its existence
through one of his students who had read the com-
plete text in the public press. Naturally the students
at the seminary were much excited. Shortly after-
wards, however, a new communication came from
the Vatican, modifying the first in a sense very
favorable to Monsignor Mercier. Nothing could
have been more tempting than to have it published
in the newspapers which had printed the first ar-
ticle. The prelate's conduct in the matter, and the
motives which dictated his decision, he was later to
describe himself :

"When the paper came into my hands, I won-
dered whether my duty to the institute did not
oblige me to take full advantage of the opportunity
which Providence seemed to have given me for re-
establishing the truth. But I could hear a sort of
voice whispering within me : 'You can, if you choose,
defend yourself; here you have the means in your
very hands; but, in that case, your defense will be
the defense any human being could make of himself.

112 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

If, on the contrary, you rely on Me, I will take care
of you, and your cause will be sustained by all the
power of your God.' . . . After that I dismissed
the idea of using the document from my mind."

Matters, in fact, followed their due course, and
not long afterwards public opinion throughout the
country had turned in the prelate's favor.

Another incident, dating from that same period,
throws into relief his great thoughtfulness and deli-
cacy toward his colleagues in the clergy, as well as
his profound humility. At the time in question,
people in high places were discussing with consider-
able heat the propriety of his using French in the
teaching of philosophy in his institute. A synod of
the Belgian bishops was about to convene at Ma-
lines. The atmosphere was tense. The president's
adversaries were waging a hot fight for the sup-
pression of French, knowing full well that success
on their part would strike a noisy and perhaps a
fatal blow at the prelate's enterprise.

Monsignor Mercier was summoned to the meet-
ing. He had already committed the outcome to the
hands of Providence, but he still felt the need of
prayer, and entered the cathedral for further com-
munion with God. When he had finished, long hours
still separated him from assembly time. Where
should he spend them? He thought of visiting a col-
league. But, in the state of mind then prevailing,

THE MIRACLE 113

contact with Mercier would have compromised any
one. Rather outrage and loneliness for himself than
the least hurt to a friend! He took refuge in the
Grand-Seminaire, seeking out a remote corner in
that vast establishment in the hope that he could
sit there without being seen. It was a dark Novem-
ber day. The seminarists were just returning from
their weekly hike in the country. As they were cross-
ing a hallway, the prelate caught sight of one of
his former students, and, to keep himself in counte-
nance, he called to him, leading him away into a
dimly lighted room that they might talk in peace.
The young man never knew the service he had ren-
dered his great teacher at a moment when the lat-
ter was opposed, attacked, and, for the most part,
abandoned, in one of his noblest missions.

Some months later, the Pope was solemnly to de-
cide in Monsignor Mercier's favor, and the city of
M alines was to acclaim as its archbishop the man
whom it had so recently sheltered as an outcast !

***

Meanwhile, however, the censure emanating
from Rome had put most of Monsignor Mercier's
pupils to flight. In 1897, tne number of candidates
for the priesthood had been reduced to fifteen; and
the enrollment of lay students at the institute had
dwindled in like proportion. The buildings were
nearing completion at that moment. They seemed

114 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

fated to remain a collection of deserted halls.
Future prospects did not make the present any
easier to bear. Out of the fifteen students left in
the seminary, seven were to leave at the next vaca-
tion, either because they would have finished
their studies or for other cogent reasons. Unless
Providence came to the rescue, the end was in
sight.

Monsignor Mercier, however, never lost faith
that the Lord would provide; and he announced a
series of supplications to the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
pleading that at the beginning of the next term the
community might have twenty-five members. A few
months later, and contrary to all expectations, some
of the older students found that they could remain
to pursue advanced studies. Some foreigners came
in from America, from Poland, from Ireland. On
the eve of the first Friday in December, exiactly
twenty-five candidates were on hand, ready to sing
a mass of thanksgiving to the Sacred Heart on the
following morning.

This result strengthened faith in every one. One
of the seminarists had observed that the new Lit-
anies of the Sacred Heart recently approved by
Leo XIII contained thirty-three invocations. He
suggested supplications for thirty-three members at
the opening of the next term. The prayers were
more fervid than ever. Once more the Lord proved

THE MIRACLE 115

docile. On the appointed day thirty-three seminarists
were gathered about Monsignor Mercier.

With the plant then available, no greater pros-
perity could be hoped for the house was full. It
was deemed wiser to offer no more prayers! Stu-
dents and faculty took it for granted that the en-
rollment would automatically maintain itself, all
the more since there had now been a favorable turn
in public opinion. At the beginning of the next term,
the community dropped to twenty-nine !

The lesson was immediately grasped. As Canon
Simons relates:

"We had to make amende honorable for our ex-
cess of natural faith by a display of supernatural
faith. This time, again, Monseigneur was bold. He
decided to petition the Sacred Heart for a progres-
sive increase in numbers so that at the end of three
academic years the seminary should be harboring
. . . twice twenty-nine students !"

Monseigneur was bold indeed! The institution
had been organized for a community of thirty at
the most. To try for sixty more or less was to go
borrowing trouble in connection with housing and
other material needs. But that could be arranged!
Providence had provided Monsignor Mercier with
a very generous Maecenas who also had great faith
in miracles the Canon Thiery, Monsignor Mer-
cier's faithful professor at the Institute of Philos-

Il6 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

ophy. Professor Thiery promised to assume the
costs of any new buildings that should be needed;
and he actually began work on them in the certainty
that the "bold prayers" would be efficacious. Sup-
plications began. Every one believed. Every one
waited. When the three years were up, the number
of students in the "seminary of Leo XIII" was fifty-
eight ! No more and no less !

"Those are the facts," adds M. Simons, "you
may make of them what you will; but at any rate
one may imagine the religious fervor aroused at
the seminary by Monsignor Mercier's example of
tender, trustful piety."

Such signal favors from above demanded a
striking testimonial of gratitude. At the earliest
possible moment, the president led a delegation of
his seminarists to Paray-le-Monial, where a serv-
ice of unanimous and fervent thanksgiving to "Jesus
the Supreme Priest" was sung in the Chapel of the
.Visitation ; and the prelate caused a commemorative
plaque to be set up in the choir of the chapel, in-
scribed with the following words :

RECTORES ET ALUMNI SEMINARII CLERI-
CORUM LOVANIENSIS NOMINI LEONIS XIII
DEDICATI, SACRO JESU CHRISTI CORDI DE
PR^ESENTI TUTELA, NUMERO DISCIPULORUM
MIRABILITER AUCTO, GRATIAS EGERUNT.

THE MIRACLE 117

"The masters and students of the Seminary of Leo XIII
in Louvain here gave thanks to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
for the divine protection whereby the number of students
in that house was miraculously increased."

Such acts throw the personal piety of Monsignor
Mercier into high relief and indicate the ascetic
trend of the religious training he imparted to his
young men. Prayer, as was natural, held the place
of honor among the religious exercises of the semi-
nary. During the first few months the president did
his best to demonstrate its importance and teach
its method; then, following his principle of culti-
vating a fastidious conscience, a sense of responsi-
bility in his future priests; knowing, too, that later
on in life they would have for the most part no wit-
ness of their devotional acts save God, he tried to
instil in each the habit of daily meditation in the
privacy of the cell. It seems, one might add, that
the results of this practice never quite measured up
to the hopes the prelate had of it. To another exer-
cise, Monsignor Mercier attached great importance,
the monthly "collect" or contemplation, this, how-
ever, performed in public. One Sunday each month
was devoted to pious concentration lasting from six
in the morning to eight at night. The service com-
prised a joint recital of the breviary (all the young
men participating, though they had not yet taken

Il8 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

their orders) ; two periods of private meditation
in the cells; high mass, vespers, and benediction;
two sermons, the longer of which, the one in the
evening, Monsignor Mercier preached himself. A
single period of recreation was allowed just after
the midday meal.

It was in the evening sermon referred to that the
most inspired utterances seemed to pour from Mon-
signor Mercier's heart. He was deeply concerned
to deliver the sermon himself; but it was under-
stood that, as a mark of respect for his youthful
auditors, he would never speak unless he had worked
a week on the sermon. In case so much leisure had
not been granted him, the "collect" was postponed
to the following Sunday. These days would some-
times find the students engaged in feverish prepara-
tion for their examinations. All, however, closed
their books, laid aside their notes, and not one of
them ever thought of stealing a minute of such
hours consecrated to things spiritual and eternal.

Monsignor Mercier thought liturgical magnifi-
cence even more important for the worship of the
priest than for that of the layman. He would have
preferred beautiful services in the little chapel of
the seminary from the start as an aid to the religious
spirit among his charges. But what could be done
in a tiny sanctuary fifteen feet square, a third of
it occupied by the altar? Fortunately, the architect

THE MIRACLE 119

who had provided for the construction and decora-
tion of the splendid chapel of the Institute of Philos-
ophy was waiting only for an opportunity to bring
the liturgy in all its beauty to the seminary. A room
of suitable dimensions was at last made available
and converted into a chapel. From then on divine
service unfolded with all the splendor incident to
the observance of the rules. The Gregorian plain-
chant was adopted by Monsignor Mercier even be-
fore the ordinances of Pius X were proclaimed.
He was also one of the first to restore sacerdotal
vestments of the ancient and specially magnificent
design. It was soon noticed abroad in the upper
seminaries that the students prepared by Mon-
signor Mercier were always the best trained in
ceremonial observances. Those who had feared
that the intensive intellectual effort he required
might desiccate the souls of these young men were
henceforth reassured.

What with the superintendency of his seminary,
the presidency of the institute (where building was
still in progress), the preparation of his lectures,
and the writing of his books, Monsignor Mercier
had scarcely a moment when he could even think of
taking a vacation. Yet he would not let himself for-
get Braine-l'Alleud, where the woman whom he
called "his sainted mother" had now found her

120 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

grave, and where a numerous company of nephews
and other relatives gathered about him whenever
he paid them his rapid visits. On the other hand, in
proportion as the burden of intellectual concerns
and administrative duties grew heavier, he felt
greater need to free himself from the slavery of
friendships and interviews, were it only for a few
days at a time, to be able to finish one of his absorb-
ing literary productions in the quiet of the country.
But with whom could he seek such refuge, now that
his own family had scattered?

One day his eyes fell upon a workingman's cot-
tage located just outside a hamlet called L'Hermite,
in the neighborhood of Braine. It happened to be
for sale. The house lay in a calm, secluded spot, not
too far from the various homes of his relatives. The
rude simplicity of the structure was in keeping with
his conception of evangelical poverty. He bought it.
After a little remodeling, he moved thither a few
pieces of his furniture and the books he needed to
have at hand even during vacation times. The place
became the country retreat he had long dreamed of,
and it was destined to shelter the prelate's rare mo-
ments of leisure to the end of his life. Not that he
fled to this hermitage to bury himself in his books :
his favorite recreation there was, as he said, "to
play priest," to replace, that is, the cures of the
neighborhood in the care of their sick and in the

THE MIRACLE 121

services in their churches. Those overworked clergy-
men were only too happy to take advantage of such
kindnesses in order to enjoy a few days of rest them-
selves.

At Louvain the period of contention and strife
had come to an end. Monsignor Mercier's reputa-
tion had gained ground progressively in Belgium,
in Europe, and in the Americas. Widely known and
universally loved as president both of the Institute
of Philosophy and of the Seminary of Leo XIII, he
saw a circle of alumni widening about him each year,
and coming back to Louvain at each commencement
to pay him admiring homage. He was at the height
of his literary productivity. Everything seemed to
presage for him the enjoyment of a long period of
fruitful literary toil in the bosom of the university.

Nevertheless, he began to hint from time to time
to his closer friends that he was feeling the weight
of age, that a post as president emeritus would not
seem unattractive to him. Was it a hankering for
greater leisure that he might bring his philosophical
writings to completion? We may be sure that it was
something else. His institute was now fully organ-
ized, highly esteemed, securely established on bases
that guaranteed a long and peaceful future for it.
A spirit like his must have felt, who can say how,
consciously, the need for a more active, a more peril-
ous, field in which to deploy its powers. In any event,

122 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

if the prelate ever dreamed of retiring to a studious
solitude, any number of his friends had different
plans for him.

Cardinal Goossens, archbishop of Malines, had
just died, and quite suddenly; in fact, the details of
his passing were still unknown at Louvain. There
was doubt whether he had even been able to receive
the last sacraments. Monsignor Mercier was much
concerned on the point and, on the day in question,
expressed his anxiety to his assistant, the Abbe
Simons, as they were taking their usual walk to-
gether after the midday meal.

The abbe knew that on other occasions when cer-
tain episcopal sees had become vacant, public opin-
ion had pointed to Monsignor Mercier as the man
to fill them.

"It is probable, Monseigneur," said he, "that
your name will be mentioned again, this time for
the archbishopric of Malines !"

"Oh, I don't believe that; I've caused too much
trouble in my day."

"You have fewer opponents now than you ever
had. But, however that may be, you certainly h,ave
hosts of influential friends; and they will be only
too happy to present and support your candidacy."

"No, no, you are surely mistaken ! In that direc-
tion there's nothing for us to fear. . . ."

THE MIRACLE 123

The doorkeeper just then appeared with a letter
sent by special delivery from Malines.

"It's from the dean of the chapter," remarked
Professor Simons, "I recognize his writing."

"You are right," answered the prelate; and hur-
riedly opening the letter he glanced at the first lines.

"The cardinal received the last rites," he said
calmly; but then, all of a sudden, his companion
saw him start. "How can I do that? . . . Imagine
what this good dean wants of me! To deliver the
cardinal's funeral oration! He can't really mean
it! I am not the orator for such an occasion. It's
ridiculous !"

"Monseigneur, a first sign from Providence !"

A colleague came up. New complaints !

"See what they are writing me ! ... In the first
place I haven't the voice to fill a church like the
Metropolitain of Malines. I must decline!"

"That, Monsiegneur, is not the opinion of those
who know you. Accept, since you have been chosen!"

The prelate was still perplexed. He left his com-
panions and betook himself to the chapel to confide
his doubts to God. Finally he decided to go to Ma-
lines, in order, if possible, to be excused from the
task. But the vicars of the chapter had known what
they were about. They stood by their choice, which
had, in their minds, an ulterior significance. A few
days later the talk of Belgium was the probable

124 A L IF E OF CARDINAL MERCIER

nomination of Monsignor Mercier to fill the vacant
metropolitan see.

The truth was that some of the prelate's former
students, who now occupied important positions, had
urged their old master's elevation to the arch-
bishopric upon Monsignor Vico, the papal nuncio in
Brussels, as well as upon the King of Belgium. Both
had entertained the proposition favorably. This was
known to every one; but still every one awaited the
verdict of Rome, weighing the chances of success
and failure.

Monsignor Mercier had fled to his hermitage
near Braine-l'Alleud and was peacefully working on
one of his books. There a missive from the papal
nuncio came to him Pius X had named him Arch-
bishop of Malines ! The date was the seventh of
February in the year 1906. Desire Mercier was then
fifty-five years old.

Monsignor Mercier had had due warning of what
was going on ; nevertheless, in his humility he would
fain have persuaded himself "that there must have
been some mistake." Strong in his trust in God, he
stood unmoved before the formidable responsibility
now being thrust upon him.

After an obligatory visit to the papal nuncio at
Brussels, he was expected back in Louvain. There
he hurried straight to the Seminary of Leo XIII,

THE MIRACLE 125

where he arrived at the dinner-hour. Quite simply
and naturally he took his customary seat at table
with his young men. Should they begin the reading
as usual? The impulse to applaud was too great to
be controlled. The refectory broke into joyous ac-
clamation. The president rose to his feet. The mo-
ment had come for a word of farewell. Very simply,
in his accustomed manner, he spoke from his heart :
"This testimonial of affection which is the real
meaning of your applause touches me more deeply
than I can say in words, much more deeply than this
news of my coming elevation to the plenitude of our
ministry. That notification found me perfectly calm.
I did not desire the honor to which I have been
called. It is hard for me to realize that it is meant
for me, even though it bears my name. I cannot get
over the feeling that it must have been intended for
some one else. My real hope was to pass the rest of
my days in this house, which I looked upon as my
nest, where everything is dear to me, where every-
thing has a little bit of myself about it. ... And
that is the feeling that still fills my heart, at this
moment when Providence has just seen fit to change
the future I would have chosen for myself. But, my
dear friends, if the office to which I am called must
perforce tear me away from you who are my family,
my heart will remain with you. The Seminary of
Leo XIII will have a special place in my affections

126 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

all my life long, and the sons of this privileged
house will, for their part, keep alive, I trust, the
same particular affection for me."

His words of farewell to the students of the uni-
versity, a little less personal in tone, or rather, per-
haps, a bit more official, were above all else a call
to action:

"When I look into the future, and hear such
formidable figures: two million two hundred thou-
sand souls, more than two thousand priests ; when I
think of the schools, the colleges, the university, the
parishes with all their religious and social activities,
my heart is sometimes perturbed, as though I were
'afraid. But, my dear friends, I must not be afraid.
. . . God knows me as I am, with my defects and
my capacities. He has deigned to choose me just
as I am. He will be my help. Fiducialiter agam et
non timebo. I shall stand fast in the faith and not
be afraid. I shall neither lament a past which is no
more, nor dream fatuously of a future which is not
here. Man's duty bears on a single point what
shall he do in the present moment? . . . The pres-
ent, then, is the only moment to consider; it is
God's will that to-day we worship, that to-day we
extol, and, be it with fear and trembling in our
hearts, courageously perform."

On March 25, in the year 1906, Mercier received
his consecration in the metropolitan church of Ma-

THE MIRACLE 127

lines. The rites were administered by Monsignor
Vico, the papal nuncio, surrounded by all the bishops
of Belgium and many other prelates. The cere-
monies, attended by a personal representative of the
King and by delegates from the high ministries of
state, was rather a demonstration of affection than
a grandiose formality. Much was expected of the
new archbishop. The time had come for him to show
his full scope.

CHAPTER VII

THE ARCHBISHOP OF MALINES

THE great diocese of Malines, one immense net-
work of religious, academic, and social or-
ganizations, had just been entrusted to an arch-
bishop who had never participated directly, whether
as cure, as vicar, or as missionary, in any sort of
parochial work. The career of this scholar had 'been
confined to the most theoretical branches of meta-
physical speculation. What would he do now, when
he found himself at the head of groups essentially
designed for action groups of all sorts: religious
corporations, charitable brotherhoods, civic leagues,
schools, labor unions, labor syndicates? Flow would
he stimulate them, guide them, direct their activity
for the best interests of religion in the diocese? Cer-
tain critics, to whom any man devoted to scholarly
pursuits, any "intellectual," as they say, is unfit for
executive management, for "business," must have
judged that Pius X had been strangely inspired !

But at that moment, it should be observed, mod-
ernism was in its fullest swing. This subtle and per-
vasive error had made its way into all branches of

128

ARCHBISHOP OF MALINES 129

human knowledge. Finding its boldest supporters in
the state universities, it had seeped into the upper
seminaries. It was flaunting its doctrines in the bul-
letins of Catholic associations as well as in fash-
ionable literary periodicals. It had tainted, or at
least tempted, all youthful elements in the clergy
which were interested in the general movement of
ideas.

How explain this rapid conquest of Catholic
minds, unless by the fact that, in one respect or an-
other, the men of action who had been presiding
over the various dioceses had failed to find the time,
or perhaps the weapons, to check its victorious
march? Knowledge does not hinder action, it en-
lightens action, as witness so many great men in the
Church, who were learned doctors and, at the same
time, artisans of conquest. Of this truth Pius X was
fully aware. At that very moment he was writing
his decisive encyclical against the new heresy.

At an hour so critical for the Faith in Belgium as
elsewhere, it was well that a bishop of unquestioned
scholarship should be found to exercise a conserva-
tive influence upon the country at large. The candi-
date for the archbishopric of Malines, had, in
addition, to be a man of tested industry, wisdom,
and even diplomacy. Monsignor Mercier united all
these qualifications; though a scholar, he had suc-
cessfully administered important educational insti-

130 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

tuitions. In choosing him the Holy See had acted in
full perception of the significance of what it was
doing.

The new archbishop succeeded a prelate of re-
nowned piety, whose sense of moderation had never
diminished his zeal for academic and social prog-
ress. Nevertheless, in spite of Cardinal Goossens'
constant efforts in favor of "free" schools, ignorance
in matters of religion was making headway in Bel-
gium. The most subversive doctrines were gaining
control of the laboring classes especially. It was no
longer enough to think of the children. Something
had to be done to reach the minds of adults. Mon-
signor Mercier set to work.

The scholarly theses he had expounded before stu-
dents at Louvain were not suited to the present case.
He had to translate his lessons into a simple lan-
guage comprehensible to the humblest minds. Only
in this way could the prelate now go on with his
ministry of souls, realize the inspiring motto on his
spiritual escutcheon : Apostolus Jesu Christi.

Did that mean that his long and intense study of
philosophy would go for naught in his education of
plain people? Here is an answer from one of his
co-workers at that time, M. de Wulf :

"One thing must be made clear it cannot be too
often repeated: in Cardinal Mercier the man of ac-

ARCHBISHOP OF MALINES 131

tion was served by the man of learning, and without
the latter, the former would not have been possible.
In connection with the religious, social, and political
problems of our time, any number of other men
had said the very things he said in his speeches, his
pastoral letters, his injunctions. Wherein lay the
superiority of his thought, the secret of his intel-
lectual kingship? In the unity indivisible that al-
ways prevailed between his teachings and his philo-
sophical principles! The metaphysics, the ethics,
the psychology which he had studied during his
career as a professor vivified ,all that he did, said,
wrote, commanded, during his career as an arch-
bishop. Sometimes his philosophy comes to the sur-
face and is readily identified. More often it re-
mains underground, like the invisible foundations
which support a great cathedral, acting as a base
for the entire edifice of his thought."

In his first Lenten message, Monsignor Mercier
gave an inkling of his future manner. He had no-
ticed that in more than one diocese the very solem-
nity of the traditional phraseology tended to weaken
its effect on people. Enough, therefore, of hack-
neyed generalities, conventional formulas ! In a lan-
guage still dignified, but simple, understandable, of
luminous clearness, never shrinking from the famil-
iar detail, nor even, on occasion, from the personal
equation, the bishop leaned forward like an infinitely

132 A LIFE OF. CARDINAL MERCIER

tender father toward his numerous and diversified
flock, distributing the bread of truth to them all, ac-
cording to their several tastes or capacities for as-
similation.

This paternal note characterizes his first pastoral
message which dealt with the Christian life, its con-
ditions, its obstacles, its charms and its rewards
rewards even terrestrial. Was ever argument
simpler and more convincing?

"Christians are happy," he declares. "If one may
speak of joy, it is surely I, my brethren; for who
better may bear witness to the inner joy of the soul
than the one who experiences it? I bear my witness
that in the course of my life, the more sincerely I
have surrendered myself to God, the more faith-
fully I have followed his law of love, the greater
the happiness I have known. I have shared the in-
timacy of many, many families; I have counseled
souls of all ages and all stations; and wherever I
have found a Christian spirit, there I have always
found a spirit of happiness; 'and unhappiness has
been there only in such measure as there was less
faith in the power, the wisdom, and the love of God.
I have known, on the other hand, misguided people
upon whom everything seemed to be smiling, whom
the world believed happy; yet in the end they would
come and confess to me that they had had their mo-

ARCHBISHOP OF MALINES 133

ments of intoxication and f orgetfulness, indeed ; but
that at heart, somehow, they were ashamed, dis-
tressed unhappy ! The parable of the Prodigal Son
is the story of all who depart from God."

The following year he sets out to clarify man's
duty toward God; and he thinks it best to restate
the proofs of God's existence, by phrasing in words
intelligible to all the Thomist doctrine on that im-
portant fundamental truth.

For the Lenten season of 1908, the archbishop's
theme was set for him, one might say, by the re-
cent condemnation of modernism in the encyclical
Pascendi of Pope Pius X. In this connection a first
service had to be rendered the members of his dio-
cese : to give them an accurate definition of modern-
ism and a clear perception of the significance of its
errors. Everybody was talking modernism; no one
was confessing infection with it and precisely be-
cause the poison was working inward under cover of
terms and formulas of ambiguous meaning, sapping
the foundation of faith in so many hearts.

"Modernism," says the Archbishop, "consists es-
sentially in the statement that the religious soul
should derive from itself, and only from itself, the
object and the motive of its faith. It rejects all rev-
elation as something imposed upon the conscience
from without. It amounts, therefore, to a denial

134 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

of the doctrinal authority of the Church established
by Jesus Christ and repudiates the hierarchy divinely
constituted to rule Christian society."

The very definition implied condemnation of the
error it revealed. Monsignor Mercier had only to
develop it to demonstrate the propriety of the
Pope's censure; and here again, his thorough mas-
tery of the systems of thought emanating from be-
yond the Rhine enabled him to exhibit the essential
vice of a doctrine which could not fail to disfigure,
not to say demolish, Catholicism.

Meantime the Archbishop was attending confer-
ences on the social question, promising to devote
himself, as his predecessor had done, to the interests
of the working classes, and launching a campaign
that was to be lifelong to end the class struggle by
enforcing respect of the reciprocal rights of capi-
tal and labor. Vocational training, domestic science,
educational clubs, Catholic labor leagues and syndi-
cates, mutual benefit associations, associations for
farmers and for tradespeople, unions of manufac-
turers, business men, and engineers all such activi-
ties fought for their portions of his zealous effort,
his encouraging words, his days overfilled with
effort.

Rome kept close watch on the beginnings of this
episcopacy. How could a man who had written so

ARCHBISHOP OF MALINES 135

many books and passed so many years in intercourse
with the most distinguished scholars of the world,
now find the necessary energy and the still more nec-
essary adaptability to receive so many callers, write
so many letters, show such great interest in so many
activities, attend so many meetings, preside at so
many ceremonies? Was not such devotion worthy
of still further recognition from the head of the
Church? Despite Monsignor Mercier's comparative
youth, should Belgium not be given again the cardi-
nal she was accustomed to see at the head of her
ecclesiastical hierarchy? So thought Pius X; and on
April 1 8, 1907, the red hat was bestowed upon the
Archbishop of Malines. This was another and still
closer bond between Monsignor Mercier and the
Holy See; and the newly elected cardinal so inter-
preted it:

"To-day," he said, "as he receives from the hands
of Pius X those insignia of the cardinalate which
are an austere symbol of self-sacrifice even to one's
blood, the Cardinal of Malines can only repeat, with
greater emphasis, with greater feeling, if that be
possible, one solemn filial vow : 'Most Holy Father,
I am yours, in life and in death.' "

A few days later, the title of Cardinal was offi-
cially conferred upon him in Rome in the Basilica
of St. Peter in Vinculis. Then, returning to Belgium,
he made his appearance in the purple in the very

136 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

cathedral in which eleven years before he had taken
refuge as a suspect shunned by all to confide his
humiliation and his distress to God.

Excepting none of the members of his diocese
from his solicitude, his benedictions, his acts of be-
nevolence, the new cardinal nevertheless understood
that the better part of his time and thought be-
longed to the moral welfare of his clergy. To in-
crease the intensity of Christian life in his diocese,
he needed saintly priests, and to have saintly priests,
he needed theological students who would be filled
from the outset with aspirations toward piety. Mon-
signor Mercier had worthy collaborators in this edu-
cational sphere; but could he entrust entirely to
any one else a work so dear to his own heart?

"The students of my seminaries love me," he
said upon his return from Rome, "with a filial love;
when I see them, speak to them, clasp their hands,
I feel they understand what is in my heart. The
thought of them is with me everywhere. In Rome I
celebrated mass for them at the tomb of the
Apostles; at the feet of His Holiness, I implored
for them the tenderest of blessings from the tender-
est of fathers. Every morning, at the altar, as I hold
the Host in my hands and bend my knee before it,
my thoughts go out to these beloved sons of mine, to
whom I shall pass on to-morrow the conquest of
Christ's kingdom on earth."

ARCHBISHOP OF MA LINES 137

Loving his students as he did, he felt an urge to do
something for them, to have a personal share in their
training; and he visited the seminaries and addressed
them as often as he could find time to do so. From
these talks came a little book which he entitled:
"To My Seminarists."

The influence of this volume was felt by young
priests far beyond the frontiers of his diocese. It
contains, for the most part, interpretations of doc-
trine arranged as a course; not, however, in the dry
expository style of his old lectures at the university,
but in the simple, gentle, paternal manner of the
early Fathers of the Church, whose authority, for
that matter, he is constantly invoking. As one might
suppose of a man whose own inner life was so richly
and so intensely lived, and who spent a full hour
every morning in intimate communion with the Holy
Sacrament, Monsignor Mercier particularly stressed
the efficacy of prayer as a means to spiritual growth.
Prayer, says he, is "the soul's permanent relation,
the heart's intimate and constant conversation with
the living person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and,
through Him and by Him, the soul's ascent toward
God." And most of the advice that fills the book
derives from this conception of the fundamental
importance of prayer. A few brief sentences at
the end summarize his whole theory of clerical
training:

138 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

"Cultivate your inner life all the more deeply in
proportion as the demands of your ministry for
outward action are the greater.

"Learn to love solitude, for there alone God
speaks to your heart.

"Learn to discipline your tongues, that you may
become masters of your thoughts.

"Be attentive and obedient to the promptings of
the Holy Spirit, 'for as many as are led by the Spirit
of God, they are the sons of God. Qui spiritu Dei
aguntur, ii sunt Filii Dei' (Rom. 8 : 14) .

"At the foot of the cross, in your studies, at the
altar, in all the occupations, amid all the distrac-
tions, of daily life, strive hungrily, energetically,
perseveringly, to commune with God. Tray with-
out ceasing. Sine intermissione orate' (I Thess.

"Be strict in your habits. In so far as you master
your passions, so far will you assure your freedom of
;will, the efficacy of Divine Grace upon you, serene-
ness in your inner lives.

"Never separate in your conduct two sentiments
which comprise the sum of all aspirations to a
saintly life: a humble distrust of your own powers,
and a complete surrender of yourselves to childlike
faith in Him whom we have the privilege and the
joy of calling Our Father."

That he might bring his own views of piety before

ARCHBISHOP OF MALINES 139

his priests as well, he announced in the summer of
1908 that he himself would conduct the "retreats"
of that year. This meant that he would have per-
sonal interviews with hundreds of priests, exhort-
ing them individually and often confessing them.
The great number of clerics in his diocese made it
necessary to divide them into five groups. He would
accordingly have to repeat his "retreats" no less than
five times. This enormous burden of extra work he
carried through to the end on that occasion; and he
was to do the same thing twice again in the follow-
ing years, including one of the most tragic moments
of the World War. From this work with his clergy
came two volumes, the one entitled "Pastoral
Retreats," the other, "The Inner Life." Though the
counsel embodied in the former is always inspired
by the highest wisdom and authority, its lofty tone
does not, perhaps, sufficiently offset a certain dryness
in style that may have resulted from the argumenta-
tive form the author had so long practised at the
university. "The Inner Life" classes Monsignor
Mercier not only among the eminent Thomists of his
day, but also among the most interesting moralists
of the ascetic type. It develops the contention that
the priest is the true seer, the truly religious man,
charged therefore with all the obligations this im-
plies, but in addition, with all the duties incident to
his status as a sacred person. A bold thesis, perhaps,

140 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

and surely a debatable one; though it reveals the
high conception which the Cardinal, a born bishop,
a born pastor of pastors, always had of the nature
and functions of the priesthood.

The Cardinal next asked himself how he could
carry to the masses to the great population of
toilers in the factories of the cities or on the farms
in the country, in whom faith was either languishing
or else buried under other interests the same con-
cepts and methods of piety which he had put before
his priests and his theological students. For alto-
gether too many Christians, he thought, religion
seemed to be primarily a body of practices. There
was too little attention to dogma, too much atten-
tion to conduct and morals ; and this was to miss the
essence of Christianity.

"The central point of church ritual," the Cardi-
nal accordingly proclaimed in a pastoral address, "is
the act by which the Son of God made man, crucified,
dead, and buried, triumphs over Death, becomes
again a living man, strong, if I may venture such
language, in the privilege of this prolongation of life,
and in the power thus acquired of infusing into the
living parts of the material body, which He has
taken upon Himself, the grace, the glory, and, with
these, the rapturous love, of Divine Life. In this
communication of the life of the Holy Trinity to

ARCHBISHOP OF M ALINES 141

our souls, in this communication of this life which
is the one true Life, lies the essence of the Christian
mystery."

Hence shortly, following out this principle, an-
other pastoral letter on proper attitudes of wor-
ship during mass, on means of fomenting the re-
ligious experience of the Communion. But that was
not all. The ascent of the soul toward God must be
aided by majesty of ritual and especially by genuine
church music. He made every possible effort to in-
troduce the practice of congregational singing into
his diocese. A celebration in honor of Edgar Tinel,
a Belgian composer, gave Cardinal Mercier occa-
sion to emphasize the power of sacred melodies as
auxiliaries of prayer and to recall, following a lead
of Pius X, the rules that such music should observe
if it were to help the human soul in its quest of eter-
nal beauty. He writes to Tinel :

"I am only a layman in music; but I think that I
can divine something of the thrill your artistic soul
must feel as, prostrate in spirit before the divine
Victim on our altars, you muster all the resources of
your thought, your sentiment, your voice, in an effort
to bring to yourself, and to us the worshipers in His
temple, the priests in His sanctuary, the music we
should lift to God, when we would glorify Him,
bless Him, adore Him."

These letters on doctrine and dogma the Cardinal

142 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

usually published at the beginning of Lenten sea-
sons. His other exhortations or instructions to the
great body of Christians were issued as occasion re-
quired. The most noted of such pastorals during his
early years as cardinal was the one which he pub-
lished in 1909 on the subject of the declining birth-
rate in France and Belgium and on the duties of
husbands and wives to be fathers and mothers. It
was not yet customary to treat such themes from
the pulpit nor in episcopal charges; and Cardinal
Mercier's plain and forcible, but withal circumspect,
language, coming upon the public as a novelty,
proved to be a manifesto, all the more effective for
its very moderation, against a state of mind which
seemed to be menacing historic races of old Europe
with decay and extinction.

In the conditions prevailing in modern life in
Europe, the priest is confronted with the distressing
yet stimulating fact that as a rule he cannot bring
worshipers to his services and encourage spiritual
life in his parish until he has first organized the
population entrusted to him into all sorts of so-
cieties, leagues, or groups ("works" they are
called), which serve on one pretext or another to
bring people under his ministering hand. Monsignor
Mercier soon found himself caught in the congeries
of leagues, federations, syndicates, corporations

ARCHBISHOP OF MALINES 143

which canalize the activity of Catholicism among the
two million souls in the diocese of Malines. Down to
the very end of his life such activities of "organiza-
tion" contended not only for his honorary presence
and his speeches, but also for his active supervision,
for his detailed advice, and even at times for his
money.

"To-day" writes Canon Caeymaex of this aspect
of the Cardinal's work, "will find him at a con-
gress of 'the Democratic League' or at some other
convention of Catholic labor. To-morrow will see
him presiding over a general or a district assembly
of the 'Conference of St. Vincent de Paul' or of the
'Society of St. Francis Xavier.' Now he is attending
the general or jubilee convention of the 'Society of
Peter's Pence,' or speaking before the 'Third Estate
of St. Francis,' the 'League of the Holy Sacrament,'
the 'League of the Daily Adoration of the Host.'
He tries to be present at all eucharistic or liturgical
'days'; and especially at the solemn consecrations
of the new year to the Sacred Heart, at the Church
of Ste. Gudule in Brussels."

A large number of such societies existed before
his appointment to his office. Not satisfied with en-
couraging each of them in its individual work, he
determined to call them all to a great convention in
Malines, in the year 1909, to give a public demon-
stration of the organized power of Catholics in Bel-

144 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

gium. This congress had a distinctly militant tone.
The Cardinal was eager to show that despite all ob-
stacles and opposition, especially from Socialism,
Catholicism had not interrupted its conquering
march even in Europe. He himself delivered a ring-
ing speech in admiration of the Catholics of France,
who were sacrificing their material resources in
order to remain faithful to the Church in the face
of anticlerical oppression.

The closing meeting of the congress was held on
the Grand-Place at Malines, in the presence of relics
assembled from all over Belgium. It was a cere-
mony of incomparable splendor, and made the Car-
dinal feel "he was the general of a great army
capable of winning the most difficult victories."

Another striking pronouncement of Cardinal
Mercier was the long and well-documented lecture
which he delivered (in the year 1908) before the
annual assembly of the Social Welfare League of
Liege. The speech itself denounced the economic,
physiological, and moral ravages of alcoholism; but
the Cardinal gave point to his moral by publicly
pledging himself to total abstinence from wine and
all other fermented beverages.

To supervise so many interests obliged Cardinal
Mercier to make rapid journeys to one point or an-
other of his vast diocese, and this he could do only

ARCHBISHOP OF MALINES 145

by using the vehicle that is, so to speak, imposed
upon present-day executives by the facts of modern
life the automobile. This means of locomotion
was, however, noted by certain adversaries of the
Church in Belgium. Not finding any other vulner-
able point in the Cardinal's life, they pointed out
that he was not traveling with the same simplicity
as the first disciples. A Socialist newspaper in Brus-
sels, "Le Peuple," on one occasion voiced the accusa-
tion in a leading article, in terms as trite as they
were offensive. That the Cardinal had the makings
of a doughty publicist, had he chosen to exer-
cise the gift, is apparent from his reply to the edi-
tor:

"Why must you repeat once more in an article in
which you pretend to some manners a silly insinu-
ation which has no other intent than to make me an
object of hatred to the laboring population of Bel-
gium? 'Monsignor Mercier arrived by auto, doubt-
less to remind us of Christ's entry into Jerusalem on
an ass'?

"Were I actually to travel donkey-back, would
you not accuse me of being twenty centuries behind
the times?

"I travel by auto, because the automobile is the
only means of transportation which will allow me
to address a labor union in Antwerp at noon and to
visit a home for the aged in Les Polders at Stra-

146 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

broeck, at four o'clock in the afternoon. What harm
is there in that?

"I do not have the honor of knowing you, Mon-
sieur Dewinne, who have just picked up in our
petty press (where it has been going the rounds for
two years past), the witty ( !) insinuation I am ob-
jecting to. I am sure, however, that you sometimes
travel by railroad, and (who knows ?) perhaps in the
second class. Shall I, in my turn, say that in doing
that you are trying to show yourself the equal of
your 'comrades,' who ride third class on commuta-
tion tickets? Or the equal of our poor peasants who
drag painfully along on foot to save the expense of
the country local; or who still resort to that time-
honored vehicle of Belgium, the dog-cart?

"Oh, how I detest such boorish efforts to mis-
represent the intentions of others! Is not courtesy
still not to say, especially a duty toward those
whom one regards as adversaries?"

Such severity was not in the Cardinal's more usual
manner. He never took pleasure in catching oppo-
nents at fault.

Cardinal Mercier was a Belgian, and he was proud
of being one. He deliberately tried to help with all
his influence in developing a patriotic spirit in a
country where differences of race had long delayed
the growth of this sentiment to self-consciousness.

ARCHBISHOP OF MALINES 147

"Our government," he wrote, "is responsible for
our national union; it sees to its maintenance, guides
its activity, assures its continuity and development,
and helps to consolidate its traditions. ... By vir-
tue of these functions, it exercises over citizens a
paternal care, which justifies the name of father-
land, and deserves, in return, a filial affection."

He desired that due homage be paid, to the reign-
ing dynasty, and especially to King Leopold II for
the splendid feat which opened up central Africa
to Christian civilization and endowed Belgium with
a great and valuable colony. Such homage he him-
self rendered in speeches or pastoral charges in-
spired, as he thought, by merest justice ; and, on Leo-
pold's death, he invoked the gratitude of the nation
for the memory of the sovereign whom he regarded
as one of the principal artisans of the country's
greatness.

This patriotic activity of the Cardinal, the nobility
of his words, and the disinterestedness of his partici-
pations in public life, won him an increasing admira-
tion and affection, not only in his diocese and in Bel-
gium, but beyond the frontiers of the country and
especially in France, where he was recognized as a
distant, but none the less genuine, offshoot of the the
Gallic race.

On the occasion of the unveiling of a statue to

148 A LIFE OF, CARDINAL MERCIER

Bossuet in the cathedral at Meaux, Monsignor Mar-
beau, the bishop of that diocese, selected Cardinal
Mercier, as the best fitted of the foreign prelates in
attendance at those ceremonies, to glorify the "eagle
of Meaux." The assignment was a difficult one: the
Cardinal had to speak after Jules Lemaitre, the of-
ficial delegate of the French Academy. Jules Le-
maitre's capacities as a charmer of audiences have
become historic. He had a delicately shaded art,
where every resource of diction adorned a scholarly
substance with a captivating style. His homage to
Bossuet at Meaux was a work of sheer delight. Car-
dinal Mercier was not in his best form. His voice was
a trifle shrill, his delivery at times nervous and hur-
ried. At its best it never had at its command Le-
maitre's range of musical inflection. His study on
Bossuet, sound, meaty, the product of careful re-
search, was, moreover, in a somewhat professional
style. It could bear no comparision with the winged
panegyric of the critic from Paris. His eulogy was
received with esteem rather than with enthusiasm.
But, without his suspecting it, his trip to Meaux
won him a favor of a much more significant bear-
ing. It was during the services in the cathedral at
Meaux that a great concourse of non-Belgian prel-
ates first met this cardinal who held his deep, clear
eyes fixed in ecstatic adoration on the Host. Every
one was impressed by his humility, his gentleness,

ARCHBISHOP OF MALINES 149

his irresistible personality. From that occasion
dates his eminence for saintliness among his col-
leagues. The author of these pages was vouchsafed
an opportunity to conceive an affectionate and
personal admiration for him at that time. The
Vicar-General of Meaux had been invited, with
Monsignor Ladeuze, rector of the University of
Louvain, to act as the Cardinal's escort during the
various ceremonies of the day. In driving about from
one place to another, he had been struck by the
sweet simplicity, the constant self-effacement that
distinguished all the Cardinal's acts. In the evening,
after the Salutation of the Holy Sacrament, the
Cardinal, still kneeling at his cathedra, asked a
modest favor of his assistant.

"Monseigneur, we were called here to unveil a
statue of Bossuet. But I have been so absorbed in the
various ceremonies of the day that I have not yet
had even a glimpse of it. Could you tell me just
where it is?"

"It is at the other end of the cathedral, Eminence.
I shall esteem it an honor to guide you to it at your
leisure. With your permission, I would suggest wait-
ing till the congregation has withdrawn."

The Cardinal rose from his knees, sat down, re-
sumed his inner concentration in prayer. In a quarter
of an hour, perhaps, the nave of the church had
emptied. The vicar-general then preceded him

1 50 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

toward the far end of the basilica. But suddenly the
guide's vestments caught on the nail on the leg of a
chair. He was stopped short. And then this prince of
the Church, a cardinal already famous in two con-
tinents, bent in his purple mantle to the pavement as
spontaneously and as naturally as could be, to re-
lease the entangled robes of his subordinate. An
incident negligible in itself 1 But it was one of those
little acts of quick considerateness which endeared
Monsignor Mercier to all who approached him.

In November of the year 1910, the members of a
students' club in Paris decided to celebrate the cen-
tenary of Montalembert, the great Catholic orator,
an anniversary which memories of rather acri-
monious controversy had deprived of more solemn
recognition. At the risk of seeming to take sides in a
quarrel which was an affair of Frenchmen only, the
Belgian cardinal consented to go to Paris; for one
reason, because of his interest in students, but also
because he was glad of a chance to celebrate, even
before a modest assemblage of young men, the genius
of a great defender of the Church. But how could
such an avowed supporter of orthodoxy laud a
Catholic "liberal" who, in a famous speech at the
Congress of Malines in 1863, had argued for "a
free church in a free state"? Frankness had always
been one of the powerful elements in Monsignor

ARCHBISHOP OF MALINES 151

Mercier's character, as it had been in his profes-
sorate. He did not seek to condone the doctrine of
a fighter momentarily in error because of a noble
passion for liberty.

"But," he added, "that was the only blemish on
the brilliant career of this champion of the Church.
It was an error, moreover, deriving from insufficient
enlightenment, not from dereliction of will. It could
never efface the memory of long and loyal services
rendered by Montalembert to the cause of Catholic
truth. . . . Montalembert always rejected com-
promise, whatever the consequences to his personal
interests; he remained steadfastly faithful to the
ideal of his large-minded youth. This passionate cult
of Christian duty he practised at times in a manner
that suggests pride, moodiness, sullenness, but al-
ways with unfailing unselfishness, unfailing courage.
Those who were witnesses of his life on earth will
ever think of him as the model of the true and the
valiant Christian knight."

On the subject of advanced philosophical study,
to which he had devoted the largest part of his life,
Cardinal Mercier wrote one of his most significant
opinions in the "cho de Paris" :

"It has," he said, "often been observed, that the
purpose of humanistic studies is not to furnish or en-
rich the mind, but to form it. In similar fashion the
purpose of advanced study in philosophy is to mold a

I $2 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

few elect intelligences, that they may make free dis-
interested investigation of the material world or of
the human mind, with a view to formulating more
comprehensive syntheses and to opening up new
paths for disciples who will inherit their methods,
their disappointments, their discoveries, and so from
generation to generation keep burning in the hearts
of an intellectual aristocracy the sacred fire of dis-
interested research. Our practical men, our bour-
geois, will doubtless look upon such scholars as idle
dreamers. So much the worse for our practical men
and our bourgeois! Civilization needs these
dreamers, just as it needs poets and artists, just as
it has benefited in the past by its heroes and its
saints."

In September, 1912, he was called to Vienna to
lecture before the "Catholic Teachers' League of
Austria." His theme there was the essential error
of so-called "independent" ethics. Speaking as a
philosopher and as a prelate, he contended that the
only possible foundation for moral education is the
subordination of the will to an absolute Good.

Meanwhile the clear-sightedness of the philoso-
pher was beginning to arouse in the heart of the
patriot fears which other people, alas, then regarded
as without foundation.

"Desire Mercier," writes Monsignor Baudrillart,
"perceived what many powerful minds discovered

ARCHBISHOP OF MALINES 153

only in the light of a burning Louvain: the peril,
namely, which German philosophy, the tjhought of
Kant and Hegel and their more recent disciples, con-
cealed under a seductive exterior, because of the
corollaries of all sorts that necessarily flow from
it: no longer any certain basis for knowledge; no
unshakable authority as a source of morality;
science separated from metaphysics, metaphysics
from ethics, ethics from God; man the sole master
of his moral being, autonomous, indeed, but slave to
all the fluctuations of a reason beyond control, of a
conscience without principles ; in practice, therefore,
Might as a source of Right, and an omnipotent
sovereign State, free to command anything, free to
demand anything."

On October 2, 1911, the Cardinal addressed the
magistrates, lawyers, attorneys, and notaries of the
Brotherhood of St. Yves in Antwerp in the follow-
ing significant words :

"No, Might is not Right 1 The use of force may
be legitimate or illegitimate that is to say, it may
conform to or be contrary to Right; but the only
legitimate use that any human government whatso-
ever can make of force is to place it at the service of
Law, to the end that Law may be enforced and re-
spected. Man himself is not Law; he does not even
make Law; he is subordinated to it; and the social
order which safeguards the maintenance of Law is

154 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

possible only on condition that individual wills be
disposed, and that rebellious wills be, if necessary,
constrained, to respect Law."

The hour was at hand when the Cardinal would
'fling these principles into the very face of a most re-
doubtable and cynical violation of the Law of which
he had made himself the champion.

CHAPTER VIII

A FIGHTING CARDINAL

IN Europe at large before the war," writes M.
Goyau, "the Archbishop of Malines had a cer-
tain reputation: he was known to cultivated people
as a philosopher and a scholar as an 'intellectual'
of distinction. And this was, indeed, a tribute to his
writings, but it was to miss the essence of the man.
The man stood repealed only when the Great War
came and filled in, so to speak, the outline of his
real physiognomy."

Up to that time Monsignor Mercier had been an
educator to his country. It was now his role to act as
its defender.

On the outbreak of hostilities, the Cardinal's first
act (August i, 1914) was to salute the young men
who were being called to the colors through words
of hope and encouragement addressed to their
families. Then thrilling with admiration at the
King's heroic decision not to consent to the viola-
tion of Belgian neutrality he turned to his clergy:

"The nation is aroused," he said. "Let us join

155

A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

whole-heartedly in its heroic enthusiasm. Let us pray.
Let us fast. Let us do penance. Let us urge fasting
and penance upon Christian families for at least one
day a week. Let us inspire believers everywhere to
purer thoughts and more righteous conduct, that it
may be God's pleasure to reward the far-sightedness
of our leaders and the valor of our soldiers."

But the frontiers are violated ! The insolent march
of the invader halts only under the walls of Liege !
There stands a Belgian general, calm, energetic, de-
termined to fall, if need be, under the ruins of his
city 1 And the Cardinal cries :

"Courage, my beloved brethren! Our right, we
trust and believe, will triumph nay, already it is
triumphant, for all Europe is acclaiming the ability
and the firmness of our generals, the heroism of our
troops, the spirit of our nation!"

Meantime Pope Pius X dies of sorrow at this
atrocious war which he foresaw and was unable to
prevent. His successor has to be chosen. Stricken
with anguish at the dangers he sees impending over
his diocese, Cardinal Mercier departs for the con-
clave that is to elect Benedict XV.

But reports come pouring into Rome. Cities in
Belgium are burning! Innocent people are falling by
hundreds before the enemy's firing squads ! Families
are being terrorized by arbitrary imprisonments!
The Cardinal leaves Italy precipitately and hurries

A FIGHTING CARDINAL

back toward his cathedral city. A few days later he
is in Malines.

What a spectacle was to greet him in that Bel-
gium already trampled underfoot and bleeding!
Namur plundered, Louvain, Vise, Dinant, partly
burned, the library of the university utterly de-
stroyed, families homeless and starving, priests
hunted down, arrested, executed without trial, as
indeed without cause such the country which a few
weeks before had been bright with prosperity and
tranquil happiness!

Destruction was beginning in Malines itself.
Shrapnel bursting in the summer sky, roofs and
towers thunderously crumbling, Belgian regiments
sonorously tramping their rounds under the majestic
and now tragic belfry of Saint-Rombaut, a gradual
vanishing in flight of the more opulent citizens
all bespoke the great terror that hovered ominously
over the city and filled the most stalwart hearts with
apprehension. The Cardinal returned to a palace
where the walls had already been riddled with shells;
he resumed his work to the music of a cannonade
that was shattering his windows and shaking every
partition in his house.

On the morning of Sunday, the twenty-seventh of
September, the bombardment redoubled in violence,
this time taking the archbishop's palace itself as a

158 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

special target. The Cardinal, however, continued his
customary labors in his study, his domestics cower-
ing, terrified and trembling, in the corners about him.
At last his private secretary, Canon Vrancken,
grew worried and inquired as to his intentions.

"When the flock is in danger," the prelate replied,
"the shepherd cannot desert his post!"

He had no thought of leaving Malines !

Toward noon the Cardinal ordered lunch for his
secretary and 'himself. The footman in attendance
all but dropped the dishes and their contents several
times as shells burst in the neighborhood. It was
ludicrous as well as terrifying, and the Cardinal
could not repress a smile. Perfectly calm himself, he
tried his best to reassure the man. In the afternoon
large holes opened in the walls of the palace under
the constant rain of shells and projectiles from
machine-guns. The three servants in his household
took refuge in the cellar and finally the prelate him-
self consented to join them there with his secretary.
As evening came on, Canon Vrancken went to the
City Hall for news. The burgomaster reported that
the Germans would shortly be occupying Malines.
His orders were to clear the place of all inhabitants.
Would not the Cardinal set a good example by with-
drawing as soon as possible? The pressure of events
was proving master of the Cardinal ! His own auto-
mobile he had given to the army. He accordingly

A FIGHTING CARDINAL 159

allowed a military van to be placed at his disposal,
and, still accompanied by his secretary, left Malines
that very evening (September 27) for Antwerp.

At that moment the renowned fortifications of the
seaport city seemed to promise an impregnable ram-
part against the German onrush; but the little Bel-
gian army, alas, was to enjoy only a momentary
respite behind such useless walls. Two weeks had
not passed before they yielded to the "big Berthas" !
Then Albert's army was obliged to retire to the nar-
row strip of territory on the French frontier which,
for four years, was to constitute the free Kingdom
of Belgium!

When Antwerp fell, only one course was open to
the Archbishop of Malines. He must return to his
city, now terrorized by the German occupation, to
defend his flock against the excesses of the con-
querors. Before leaving Antwerp, however, he in-
terviewed the German governor of that city,
General von Huene, and obtained a promise that
young Belgians remaining in invaded territories
would not be taken to Germany, either to be enrolled
in the army or to be employed at involuntary labor.

The Cardinal reentered his palace at Malines on
the twentieth of October. The German Government
had just appointed a governor-general for Belgium
Baron von der Goltz with headquarters in Brus-
sels. The baron exchanged calls with Monsignor

160 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

Mercier and promised to cooperate with the arch-
bishopric for the welfare of the civil population. Un-
fortunately he had little opportunity to carry out
his good intentions, granting that he had them. He
was replaced by Baron von Bissing on December 3.

Von Bissing had a formidable assignment. His
task was to maintain order in a country sullenly
chafing under a hated yoke, a country where smok-
ing ruins on every hand were crying for vengeance,
where the tears of widows and bereaved mothers
were a daily protest against the insolent exultance of
the invader, where a consciousness of right and hopes
of revenge set hearts undaunted quivering at each
new insult. It wa-s a task as difficult in execution as
it was essential to the future of the German cause.

The new governor was fully alive to the impor-
tance and the distinction of an office then so conspic-
uous in the public eye. But he was also sagacious
enough to realize that the use of force alone would
probably defeat his ends. Monsignor Mercier ex-
ercised a powerful influence in Belgium. The Catho-
lic clergy had a strong hold on the masses. Von
Bissing, accordingly, conceived a policy wherein the
Cardinal and the latter's priests could be used to
lead an angry Belgium toward gradual acceptance of
the foreign domination. It would, to be sure, prove
difficult to adapt a clergy so patriotic to such a pur-
pose. But von Bissing was a shrewd man. He was

A FIGHTING CARDINAL l6l

personally acquainted with Cardinal von Hartmann,
Archbishop of Cologne. It occurred to him that per-
haps this eminent prelate, an ardent partisan of
Germany, might be the person to bring the Arch-
bishop of Malines to see the desirability of a pru-
dent Germanization of Belgium.

Von Bissing was not mistaken. Von Hartmann
consented to "recommend" the new governor to
Cardinal Mercier in a letter which depicted von
Bissing as an "intelligent, circumspect, just, benevo-
lent" man, who was always anxious to meet church-
men half-way in anything they desired.

The situation which now faced Cardinal Mercier
was peculiarly delicate from the contradictions ap-
parent in the duties which events seemed to be lay-
ing upon him. On the one hand, he had no inten-
tion of serving the enemy's cause even in an
indirect way. On the other, Belgian priests, Bel-
gian teachers, Belgian citizens, were languishing, in-
nocent all, in German jails. It was his duty to plead
for these; and other cases of distress would surely
be requiring his intervention in the course of the
war. To be of any effective use he would need the
enemy's good-will, von Bissing's in particular.

He went to Brussels and called upon the new gov-
ernor. Von Bissing received him with the greatest
politeness and the very next day returned his call
at Malines. There again the governor outdid him-

1 62 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

self in manifestations of friendliness : he was striv-
ing to gain an important ally it was well worth
while to promise wonders 1

The Cardinal scented the trap out of hand. He
thanked von Bissing for his benevolent attitude,
but he thought it better to remind him frankly that,
though the attitude in question had its advantages
for all concerned, it would never persuade the Bel-
gians to overlook the outrage of the occupation and
the horrors which had attended it in its beginnings.
Such language thwarted the governor's plans for
the moment. He took his leave with a politeness ef-
fusive but circumspect. But the Cardinal was not
the man to let a doubt remain in any mind as to
the stand he was going to take regarding the inter-
ests of his country. He was careful to confirm in
writing, in a formal and detailed letter, the declara-
tions he had made in the course of that rapid
conversation. On December 28 he wrote yon
Bissing:

"My esteem for your Excellency personally, my
gratitude for the interest you manifest in the wel-
fare of my country, my desire not to augment, but
rather indeed to lighten, the burdens of your office
and its incident responsibilities, are absolutely sin-
cere. But I consider it the part of frankness to add
that, whatever the personal inclinations of Baron
von Bissing may be, he represents among us, as

A FIGHTING CARDINAL 163

governor-general, a hostile and a usurping Power,
against which we assert our right to independence
and to respect of our neutrality. Furthermore, speak-
ing as a representative of the moral and religious
interests of Belgium, I protest against the violent
acts of injustice of which my fellow-countrymen
have been innocent victims."

With this letter Monsignor Mercier enclosed an-
other to Cardinal von Hartmann in which, in a
tone of indignation not sparing the German people,
he denounced "horrors which remind one of the
pagan persecutions of the first three centuries of the
Church."

Von Bissing, and his ecclesiastical sponsor, could
now know just where they stood: to avoid greater
evils still, Cardinal Mercier would use his influence
to maintain orderliness in the civil population of
Belgium; but never would he lift a finger to persuade
acceptance of the German regime. His sovereign
was the King of the Belgians; any one else was an
enemy in his eyes and would so remain.

Hardly had these personal and private declara-
tions reached von Bissing, than the primate of Bel-
gium restated them, for the benefit of the world at
large, in a document that will remain one of his
best claims to the admiration of posterity, as it
has been to the gratitude of his country. Already
on Christmas day, in the year 1914, he had sent to

164 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

all the priests of his diocese his famous pastoral
on "Patriotism and Endurance."

In this letter, written in the presence of an enemy
intoxicated with victory and master of his country,
of his city, of his very palace, this bishop of the
Church, standing alone and unarmed against regi-
ments of thousands, dared affirm that the first duty
of every Belgian citizen was "a duty of gratitude
toward the national army" which had resisted the
aggressor.

"You cannot doubt it, my brethren," he wrote,
"God will save Belgium, or, let us say rather, God
is saving Belgium. Breathes there a patriot any-
where who does not feel that our Belgium is a big-
ger Belgium, that our country has been glorified?
That heroism which she, our mother, has been bring-
ing forth in her hour of pain, she is pouring into
the blood of every one of her children."

The King, he added, was indeed in refuge on a
narrow strip of ground still Belgian, but, in the
opinion of the world, he had reached thereon, "the
summit of the moral ladder." Reminding his clergy
that England had been faithful to her oath, he de-
clared that Germany, on the contrary, had betrayed
her plighted word. Before the eyes of the con-
querors and sparing no detail, he recounted, city
by city, village by village, the list of their destruc-
tions and their murders. To a listening Europe, still

A FIGHTING CARDINAL 165

doubting, still badly informed, he affirmed, on his
sacred word as a bishop, that "hundreds of inno-
cent persons had been shot to death." To the Bel-
gians in his diocese and beyond its boundaries, to
Belgians everywhere, he proclaimed that "the au-
thority of the invader is not a legitimate author-
ity," and that "no one owes it, in the bottom of his
heart, either respect or fidelity or obedience." Fi-
nally, he ordered prayers for the success of the Bel-
gian armies, for the. recruits who were drilling for
coming battles, for the deliverance of Belgium "in
order that, after all the vicissitudes of the battle-
fields, our country may rise up again, nobler, purer,
more glorious than before."

Through channels on which the Cardinal could
rely, the letter immediately became public property,
not only in Belgium, but in France as well. It
aroused, in the latter country, an indescribable emo-
tion. In a message which they signed together, Car-
dinals Lucon, Andrieu, Amette, Sevin, and De Cale-
ieres expressed to the primate of Belgium the
admiration and the gratitude of their whole nation.

Von Bissing had been discounting Cardinal Mer-
cier as an ally. Now suddenly he found himself con-
fronted with an adversary all the more redoubtable
since he could not be directly attacked, protected as
he was by the purple and by the still recognized
prestige -of the Pope. Something nevertheless had

1 66 A LIFE OF. CARDINAL MERCIEK

to be done to conjure away the effects of the ter-
rible message. The governor resorted to a strata-
gem.

He had knowledge of the letter before it was
read from the pulpits. He, accordingly, sent to all
the priests of the diocese a note, which each one of
them was obliged to acknowledge in writing. In it
he declared that he, von Bissing, had persuaded the
Cardinal to modify the text of the letter, and that,
with the consent of the Cardinal, he was requesting
all priests to postpone public reading of the docu-
ment. It happened, however, that, on receiving the
note in question, the Dean of Ste. Gudule in Brussels
suspected a ruse, and left immediately for Malines
to learn from the Cardinal himself just what orders
he had issued. Monsignor Mercier thereupon dic-
tated a declaration, with the request that the dean
communicate it, by all available means, to the priests
whom the Germans were trying to hoodwink:

"Neither verbally nor in writing have I revoked
or do I now revoke anything whatsoever in my pre-
ceding instructions. I protest against this violent in-
terference with my pastoral functions. Pressure was
exerted to induce me to sign a modified form of my
letter. I refused to sign. Then an effort was made to
cut me off from my clergy by forbidding them to read
my letter. I have done my duty. My clergy will under-
stand that it is their turn to do theirs."

A FIGHTING CARDINAL 167

*

The "pressure" and the "effort" alluded to in this
rescript relate to another tactic employed by von
Bissing against the Cardinal personally, while he was
trying, at the same time, to deceive the priests by a
false pronouncement.

On the second of January Monsignor Mercier
was preparing to officiate at mass in his chapel when
he was notified that some German officers were wait-
ing to see him in his antechamber. He went there
and found, sure enough, three emissaries of von Bis-
sing. One of them began by complaining of the con-
tents of the pastoral message, and concluded :

"You'll have to appear before the governor-gen-
eral to answer for that letter."

"Very well; but to-morrow all my time is taken
I must go to Antwerp to officiate at a religious
service. Day after to-morrow, Monday, if you de-
sire!"

"No! No! To-day! To-day! We are driving to
Brussels at once to get the governor's orders. Then
we shall come back here and let you know at what
hour you must appear before his Excellency. . . .
Has your pastoral already been sent out?"

"Yes, it is already in the hands of the cure in
every parish."

The three officers exchanged glances:

"Too late!"

168 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

Then, to mask the discomfiture betrayed by this
inadvertence, their spokesman again assumed a tone
of accusation:

"You must admit that you have disobeyed the
regulations as to censorship."

"Whose censorship?"

"Our censorship ! Notices have been posted every-
where that nothing was to be printed without the
governor's authorization."

"Gentlemen, it is not my habit to go out to the
street-corners to read public notices. If your meas-
ures were at all important, you might very well have
filed proper notification of them with the archbishop-

ric."

The three emissaries withdrew.

The next day, Sunday, and early in the morning,
the Cardinal received a telegram from Brussels for-
bidding him to go to Antwerp for the ceremony at
which he was to officiate ; and in the evening officers
called at his residence to see whether "his Eminence
had really been at home all day." On maturer re-
flection, however, von Bissing abandoned the in-
sulting plan of calling the Cardinal to account. He
had, nevertheless, to vent his spleen somehow.

The next day, Monday, he sent a new emissary to
Monsignor Mercier with a letter six pages long,
written, as a gratuitous act of disrespect, in German
characters. The Cardinal asked for time to prepare

A FIGHTING CARDINAL 169

a reply, but the messenger refused, on order, to leave
the palace until he had the answer in his hands.

The letter sharply rebuked the tone of the arch-
bishop's pastoral, which, the governor said, would
tend to excite the populace against "the occupying
Power." By way of reprisal, a detachment of soldiers
was sent during the night to surround the house of
M. Dessain, the printer who had executed the docu-
ment. M. Dessain was arrested, thrown into prison,
and sentenced to a heavy fine.

While these acts of violence were in progress at
Malines, military automobiles were scurrying along
all the highways in the diocese. Soldiers appeared at
the parsonages in the villages, demanding the sur-
render of all copies of the pastoral at the points of
their revolvers. The priests refused to a man; and,
in spite of the most frantic efforts on the part of the
Germans, the letter was publicly read throughout the
diocese.

To get even with the Cardinal, von Bissing for-
bade him to have any further communication with
his bishops. But, when such persecution began to
draw protests from all the countries of Europe, von
Bissing deemed it necessary to defend himself. In an
article inserted in a newspaper, "La Belgique," he de-
nied that the personal liberty of the archbishop had
been interfered with, and, to cap the climax of
effrontery, went so far as to say:

170 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

"In view of the Governor-General's opinion as to
the probable effect of the pastoral, the Cardinal with-
draws his order that the clergy continue publishing
the document and distributing it in Catholic homes."

Such assertions required a disclaimer. On January
12, Monsignor Mercier addressed a letter to the
members of the clergy:

"Your attention is called to a communication pub-
lished in the newspapers by the Governor-General
of Brussels, in which it is stated that the Cardinal
Archbishop of Malines has been in no way interfered
with in the free exercise of his ecclesiastical func-
tions. The facts prove that this assertion is contrary
to the truth.

"On the evening of January first, and during all
the following night, German soldiers forced their
way into all parsonages, removed or tried to remove
my pastoral from the hands of the priests, and, in
contempt of my episcopal authority, ordered you to
refrain from reading it to the members of your con-
gregations, threatening severe penalties to be in-
flicted upon your persons or upon your parishes.

"The personal dignity of your Archbishop was
not respected. In fact, on January second before day-
break, and specifically at six o'clock, I was ordered
to appear that very morning before the Governor-
General to account for my letter to the clergy and
the people. The following day, I was forbidden to

A FIGHTING CARDINAL 171

go to Antwerp to officiate at a Salutation to the Holy
Sacrament in that Cathedral. Finally, I was forbid-
den to make calls, at my own pleasure, upon other
bishops in Belgium.

"As a citizen, as a pastor, as a member of the
Sacred College of Cardinals, I protest that your
rights and mine have been violated."

This was open warfare, a warfare which the Car-
dinal waged with indomitable energy, but without
ever departing from his customary attitude of pa-
tience and charity. The chief weapon of the church-
man was in his words, which were now being listened
to or read from one end of Christendom to the other.
The governor, accordingly, was on the watch for any
new pastoral, hoping if possible to catch his antago-
nist in some act of incitement against his authority.
Von Bissing was attributing basely aggressive mo-
tives to the Archbishop, whereas the latter was
primarily concerned, after this first quarrel had sub-
sided, with keeping the thoughts of his people on
their eternal welfare.

The Lenten pastoral of 1915 was little more than
a dogmatic treatise on a Christian's devotion to
Christ and His divine Mother. It did not stir von
Bissing's thunder. The governor continued, never-
theless, to eke out his revenge by sending priests
and monks to jail on absurd charges and ignoring

172 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

the Cardinal's pleas in their behalf. So things went
on for over a year; till on September 26, 1916, in
view of approaching Michaelmas, Monsignor Mer-
cier caused to be read in the churches of his diocese
a letter in which he invited all Catholics to pray
ardently that "the Prince of the Celestial Militia
drive Satan, and all other evil spirits abroad in the
world, back into Hell."

The Germans did not fail to recognize themselves
in the Angels of Darkness alluded to ; and the press
beyond the Rhine heaped storms of insult upon the
name of the Belgian cardinal. Von Bissing thought
himself personally attacked ; but how get the better
of this intrepid prelate who, not satisfied with re-
fusing to bow the knee, was now again on the offen-
sive?

The governor wrote a letter of violent reproof to
Monsignor Mercier, and, to emphasize its effect, had
it delivered in Malines by one of his service chiefs,
Baron von der Lancken, who was ordered to add
verbal reinforcement to the text itself.

Baron von der Lancken, who thenceforward
played a prominent part in the struggle of the in-
vaders with the Cardinal, was acting as secretary on
policy to the governor-general. A clever, well-
informed gentleman of rather superior education,
he had over his chief the advantage of never losing
his temper. He loved to argue, and would talk as

A FIGHTING CARDINAL 173

long as any one would listen. He was particularly
well grounded in Kant's philosophy.

The baron dutifully set out to demonstrate to the
Cardinal that the latter's pastoral contained insinua-
tions prejudicial to the Government of Occupation.
Exasperated at length by the man's niceties, the prel-
ate spoke out in terms so clear and unequivocal as
to admit of no reply :

"Monsieur le Baron," said he, "any excitation on
the part of the Belgium populace against you exists
only in your imagination. The signs of effervescence
which you think you perceive are only the manoeuvers
of your spies and the hullabaloos of your inquisitors.
The Belgian people is patient. It can wait for its
revenge. . . . But, let me make one thing clear,
Monsieur le Baron : you have not won the heart of
Belgium. The heart of Belgium you will never win.
I am trying to speak frankly. Pray do not take
offense at the apparent harshness of my language.
The Belgians are doing you no harm. They will not
do you any harm. But in their hearts they hate your
government. There you have the truth. I state it
because, after more than a year of experience, you
seem not yet to have grasped it! . . ."

Von der Lancken made the point that the Govern-
ment of Occupation alone had the right to command
and to exact obedience. Thinking he might catch the
archbishop napping, he asked one day what the

174 A LIFE OF, CARDINAL 1 MERCIER

Belgians would do if they were confronted by con-
tradictory orders, the ones emanating from their
own government, others from the occupying power.

"What they would do I" exclaimed the Cardinal.
"Between a power without authority and an author-
ity without power, how could they hesitate? Legiti-
mate authority would always have their preference.
They would place Law above Fact. Fact is not
Law."

Von Bissing had complained that the prelate's
attitude toward him was not consistent with the fre-
quent favors he kept asking of the Government of
Occupation. Monsignor Mercier decided to make
matters clear once for all, and, addressing von der
Lancken, he said:

"Monsieur le Baron, I am going to surprise you,
and, I fear, hurt your feelings."

"Oh, no! Do speak your mind, Monseigneur !"

"Well, I must tell you baldly, and I beg you to re-
peat it to the governor: on the score you mention,
I feel no gratitude whatsoever to you, because I
owe you none !"

"That, now, Monseigneur ... I"

"Be patient, I beg of you ! May I make myself
wholly clear ? For one concession which you are kind
enough to make me personally I am properly thank-
ful : I refer to the permission I have to use an auto-
mobile. But as for the petitions I address to the

A FIGHTING CARDINAL 175

governor (rather frequently, I admit), I have met
only with refusals. I have grown accustomed to read-
ing at the beginning of every reply, 'I regret to in-
form your Eminence. .

5 5)

Unbending haughtiness, perhaps, but a haughti-
ness fraught with supreme courtesy, dignity, religious
poise such the tone of Monsignor Mercier's deal-
ings with the oppressors of his country. His initia-
tives had in all cases an essentially pastoral charac-
ter. He was careful not to presume any political
leadership, any political role, whether in administra-
tion or in agitation. He was a father with one
purpose in mind: to counsel, succor, protect, his
children.

Once free from official annoyances, the Cardinal
went back to the comparatively peaceful task of en-
couraging his downtrodden people. In a pastoral
published on All Saints' Day in the year 1915, he
commented on the Beatitudes of the Gospels as
suitable subjects of meditation for bereaved mothers
and destitute widows.

"Oh," he wrote, "I seem to hear a voice of pro-
test rising from among you. 'Impossible !' it laments,
'impossible that happiness should be found in priva-
tions and in tears!' Impossible, my brethren? Try it
for yourselves! Our Lord deceives no one. When
He proclaims the conditions of happiness, it is an

176 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

article of faith that he who fulfils them cannot be
other than happy.

"Of course, we do not mean that superficial satis-
faction which a bewildered head, or frivolous heart,
may temporarily find in a pleasure. We mean that
deeper happiness of the soul, that perfect peace,
which is far greater than all ephemeral enjoyment,
that calm possession of ourselves which is ruffled
neither by surface storms nor worldly tempests
we mean that happiness which the Gospels and the
Church call eternal repose."

And such promises and such hopes from the good
shepherd were a source of comfort to his flock in
the midst of most cruel adversity.

Nevertheless, with his eyes thus fixed on matters
of the soul, he never lost sight of his country's honor.
To justify in the eyes of Europe measures to which
they had resorted at the beginning of the war, the
Germans had alleged, and even denounced before the
Pope, violations of the rules of warfare on the part
of a pretended corps of Belgian snipers, who were
said to have inflicted heavy damage upon the German
army and made reprisals necessary. To give legal
form to this defense, the government at Berlin in-
stituted an inquiry to be conducted by its agents
alone, and their findings were later to be published
in a memorandum entitled "The White Book."
Monsignor Mercier set out to unmask this ma-

A FIGHTING CARDINAL 177

nceuver. So far as an inquiry was concerned, Belgium
did not fear one. She asked only that it be bilateral.
The Prussian Government was planning to be both
prosecutor and judge ! Monsignor Mercier suggested
that the investigation be conducted by bishops of the
Germanic countries, acting in concert with bishops
of Belgium. He wrote to the cardinals of Germany,
Bavaria, and Austria-Hungary in that sense.

"We ask you," he said, "to help us in conducting
an inquiry that will hear both sides, you designating
as many representatives as you may choose to ap-
point we the same number three, let us say. And
we all then, in joint agreement, will invite the bishops
of a neutral state to appoint one of their number as
a superarbiter to preside over the deliberations of
the tribunal.

"You have laid your indictments before the head
of the Church. It is not just that he should hear
only your side."

No reply ever came from the dignitaries of the
German Church. Nevertheless, Benedict XV sus-
pected that Belgium was the scene of sufferings which
might require his consolation and relief. Under pre-
text of asking advice as to a reorganization of the
Congregation of Studies, he summoned Cardinal
Mercier to Rome.

*

.Would yon Bissing fall in with this trip, which

178 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

might result in embarrassing his country's propa-
ganda abroad? He was fully aware of the danger.
On the other hand, what a relief if this archbishop
of indomitable patriotism who held the ear and the
hearts of all Belgium could be got off the gov-
ernor-general's mind until the end of the war! In-
trigues, engineered in part, it is said, by the
Archbishop of Cologne, were started to persuade
Benedict XV to find some post for Cardinal Mercier
in Rome. The Pope, however, divined what was go-
ing on, and the scheme fell through. In fact, after
a most affectionate greeting to the Archbishop of
Malines, Benedict made the famous remark:
"His cause is our cause."

The Cardinal's progress through the Italian cities
was a triumphal march, and he did not miss an op-
portunity in the course of his journey to whet the
pride and fortify the morale of the Belgian people.
During his stay in Rome, a group of Belgian military
chaplains and officers on leave came to pay their
respects to him. In his reply he drew a picture of the
things he had witnessed; then, throwing reserve to
the winds, he exclaimed:

"No, I shall never bend my bishop's head before
those Germans, I shall never humble my pride as a
Belgian! I refuse! I refuse!"

And he drew himself up to his full height as he
spoke the words, his lips trembling, his fiery eyes

A FIGHTING CARDINAL 179

gazing into space as in solemn vow. In the exhorta-
tion with which he concluded, he enjoined courage
upon these soldiers of his country as a military chief-
tain might have done. They left his presence enrap-
tured.

On his return from Italy, Monsignor Mercier
wrote in a Lenten message :

"A conviction, natural and supernatural, that our
ultimate victory is certain, is implanted more firmly
than ever in my heart. . . . We shall win, have no
doubt of that, but we are not yet at the end of our
sufferings. . . . The future is not doubtful for us,
but its nature depends upon us !"

Such prophecies filled the governor-general with
rage. Unable, however, to attack the Cardinal
directly, he sought revenge by intensifying his perse-
cution of priests and monks. The masters of the
principal ecclesiastical seminaries and numbers of
influential cures were arrested, brought to trial with-
out Belgian counsel, and sentenced to deportation
or to long terms of solitary confinement. In dealing
with such outrages, the archbishop had to swallow
his patriotic pride and assume momentarily the role
of a solicitor before the torturers of his country,
emphasizing to von Bissing or to von der Lancken
the unfairness of their procedure, and pleading for
ameliorations in the treatment of the victims.

On July 21, 1916, the anniversary of Belgian in-

l8o A LIFE OF, CARDINAL MERCIER

dependence, he returned, however, to his defiant
tone. Notwithstanding the decree against public
gatherings or demonstrations, the archbishop sum-
moned the principal representatives of the Belgian
aristocracy and all Catholic citizens to a commem-
oration of the day in the Cathedral of Ste. Gudule
(Brussels). The great church was filled to over-
flowing with a throng eager to gaze upon the maj-
esty of the Cardinal's purple and to sense the rap-
ture of his comforting words.

Looking ahead to a date, then not so far distant,
the centenary of Belgian independence, and fasci-
nated by the vision of a glorious future that was to
come to the country, he said:

"Just fourteen years from this same day, our
ruined cathedrals restored, our desecrated churches
rebuilt, will all be opening their portals to receive
eager throngs. Albert our King, standing once more
upon his throne, our Queen and our royal princes
about him, will once more bow his indomitable brow,
but this time of his own free will, before the majesty
of the King of kings. Again from the Yser to the
Meuse, from La Panne to Arlon, we shall be hear-
ing the joyous pealing of our bells, and, standing
hand in hand under the vaulted ceiling of this House
of God, we Belgians will renew our oaths to our
Lord, to our sovereign, to our liberties, while our
bishops and our priests, interpreting the soul of the

A FIGHTING CARDINAL 181

nation, will lift their voices in a common impulse of
joyous thanksgiving to sing the Te Deum of our
triumph. But the first centenary of our independence
must find us stronger, braver, more united than ever
before. Let us prepare for that day in work, in
patience, in brotherly love of one another. When, in
the year 1930, we shall look back upon these dark
years just past, they will seem to us the most lumi-
nous, the most majestic, and provided we can find
the will and the endurance in ourselves the most
fortunate and most fruitful of our country's history.
Per crucem ad lucem: in s-acrifice the well-spring of
light."

Participation in this demonstration cost the popu-
lation of Brussels a fine of a million marks. Von
Bissing was furious, and increasingly bitter recrimi-
nations kept the Cardinal informed as to the gov-
ernor's state of mind. Each document issued at the
Cardinal's palace meant a visit from von der Lan-
cken at Malines, the baron, for his part, apparently
enjoying these spirited cavilings over words and
phrases in the circulars and charges of the arch-
fbishopric. But these were merely pin-pricks. The
governor had other things up his sleeve, among them
a blow which would strike the Cardinal to the heart
and leave an incurable wound behind it.

In the month of October, 1916, it suddenly struck

182 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

von Bissing that the number of workmen out of
jobs was increasing in Belgium. The factories in the
country had been pillaged and their machinery trans-
ported to Germany. It was inevitable that the out-
put of Belgian wage-earners should diminish, and
that numbers of them should become public charges
dependent on the International Relief Committee
for subsistence. Meantime there was plenty of work
in Germany. Von Bissing pretended grave concern
for the maintenance of order in Belgium, and osten-
sibly in the best interests of the unemployed he
pointed out that they could find elsewhere the bread
which their own country was refusing them. In
reality, he knew that every Belgian laborer deported
to Germany would release one German laborer for
service at the front. This scheme of reinforcing the
German army seems to have come originally from
von Hindenburg, who found in von Bissing merely
a faithful executor of the plan. At any rate the De-
portation Policy was devised as an indirect contribu-
tion to a German victory. A decree was published
whereby without previous notice, merely upon the
calling of their names, young men could be suddenly
snatched from their families, loaded by main force
on trains with steam up, and despatched in groups
toward the frontier with destinations unknown. This,
in substance, was a reversion to ancient slavery, but
with a cynicism and a brutality that the pagan na-

A FIGHTING CARDINAL 183

tions of old did not always practise. The moment
Cardinal Mercier got wind of the plan, he wrote to
the governor reminding him that his two predeces-
sors, von Huene and von der Goltz, had both for-
mally promised him that never would young men be
taken to Germany from the occupied territory and
set to involuntary labor.

Von Bissing could not help seeking an excuse for
his nation's bad faith. In replying to the archbishop
he was ironical enough to cite the need of relieving
Belgium's budgets for charity and of saving the
workers from "an idleness which would be injurious
to their technical availability."

To which Monsignor Mercier retorted haughtily :

"Do not talk to us, I pray you, of the need of
lightening the burdens of public charity. Spare us
that bitter irony. . . . Our unemployed are not
supported by the charity of your government; it is
not from your treasury that succor comes to
them. . . .

"No, the Belgian is not a lazy man. Belgian labor
has developed a religion of labor. In the noble strug-
gles of economic life, the Belgian worker has proved
his qualities. If he has scorned the high wages the
Occupying Government has been offering him, he has
done so through a sense of patriotic self-respect.
We, the pastor of our people, we who have been
brought closer than ever to their sorrows and their

184 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

distresses, know what it has cost the Belgian work-
ingman to prefer privation in independence to com-
fort in subjection. Do not cast slurs upon him. He is
entitled to your courtesy."

Whether from personal vindictiveness or in obedi-
ence to orders, von Bissing did not recede from his
position. Indeed, a measure of unforeseen severity
came to aggravate his first decrees. Town govern-
ments had. been directed by the German authorities
themselves to indicate the individuals out of em-
ployment whose removal would be least prejudicial
to local interests ; but, with admirable spirit, they
refused to give up their countrymen. The governor
thereupon proclaimed that successively, in an order
arbitrarily established by his officials, all able-bodied
males seventeen years old or over would be seized.
This time the Cardinal appealed to all his fellow
bishops in Belgium to join him in a cry of horror
which would reach wherever a human heart might
beat.

First he depicted the cruel scenes of separation:
"Squads of soldiers are forcing their way into
peaceful homes, tearing young men from their par-
ents, husbands from wives, fathers from children.
Bayonets block the doors through which the wives
,and mothers would rush to bid their loved ones
farewell. The captives, lined up in groups of forty
or fifty, are then herded into freight-cars, and, the

A FIGHTING CARDINAL 185

moment a train is full, a higher officer gives the
signal for departure. Off they go ! Another thousand
of Belgians led into slavery, condemned without
trial to the severest penalty known to the criminal
code next after death to deportation ! They know
neither where they are going nor for how long. All
that they know is that their labor will be of profit
only to the enemy."

Then he appealed to the conscience of humanity,
flouted and defied:

"We, the shepherds of these flocks which brute
force is tearing from us, appalled by the moral and
religious isolation in which they will be languishing,
helpless witnesses of the grief and terror in so many
homes that are being broken or threatened, we, the
bishops of Belgium, appeal to all men, whether
Christian or non-Christian, whether in allied nations,
in neutral nations, or even in the enemy nations, who
respect the dignity of human beings. May Divine
Providence deign to inspire all who have authority,
all who have a voice, all who have pens, to rally
around the humble flag of Belgium for the abolition
of slavery in Europe."

This appeal remained, alas, without effect. As a
refinement of cruelty, indeed, Belgian priests who
were asking permission to go into exile so as to
minister to their unfortunate compatriots, were for-
bidden to cross the frontier.

l86 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

Cardinal Mercier would not admit defeat, how-
ever. He organized a committee of former cabinet
ministers, senators and deputies, magistrates, and
high treasury officials to sign an address to the Em-
peror of Germany, which, "with a frankness befit-
ting a free people, would draw the attention of that
sovereign," to the crying abuses of the deportations
and the urgent need of affording prompt relief to
the sufferings of Belgium.

The Kaiser, this time, perceived the folly of
further provoking the indignation of the world.
The trains of bondage ceased creeping along the
railways toward the frontier. A few at a time, even,
the unfortunates who had survived the privations
and the torments of the German cantonments were
enabled to return home. But in what a plight most
of them pale, emaciated, their constitutions un-
dermined by fevers and tuberculosis, destined to
undergo long periods of treatment in the hospitals
before they could be restored to their families !

Meantime the occupation was dragging on, the
tribulations crowding thick and fast upon defense-
less Belgium. The Cardinal's problem was now to
anticipate falterings, encourage hopefulness, see to
it that the nation should hold out to the end, what-
ever the cost. In a letter entitled "Courage, my
brethren!" (February n, 1917) he once more ex-
tolled the moral grandeur of the nation and paid

A FIGHTING CARDINAL 187

tribute to the heroic endurance of the deportees who
had just reappeared among their people :

"We saw these valiant men at the time of their
departure," he writes, "bearing up in order to
hearten their comrades or, with effort supreme, in-
toning the national anthem. We saw them, as they
came back, sick, suffering, human wrecks of skin
and bone. And as we looked through our tears into
their vacant eyes we bowed humbly before them,
for they unwittingly were revealing to us a new and
unsuspected aspect of our national heroism. As the
years go by, we shall have one memory to gaze upon
for the inspiration of generations still unborn: the
spectacle of a people of seven million souls, who not
only refused, with one accord, on the second of Au-
gust, to allow their honor to be called in question,
but who also, for more than thirty months of in-
creasing physical and moral hardships, on battle-
fields or in military and civil prisons, in exile or at
home under an iron yoke, remained imperturbably
masters of themselves, and never once thought of
crying 'This is too much! We have had enough!' "

To hold his people at such "spiritual altitude,"
the Cardinal had to count on the cooperation of his
priests. So he urged them, in particular, to practise
"the pastoral virtues of the present hour" gentle-
ness, fortitude, sereneness, and, above all, charity.
The determined mood that Belgium continued to

l88 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

preserve in the presence of her conquerors must
have been highly exasperating to the governor, who
saw himself disappointed in his shrewdest calcula-
tions. At any rate, Monsignor Mercier again had to
defend himself before Baron von der Lancken for
the language used in this letter of February n.
But, as the event proved, von Bissing's days were
numbered. His weak constitution broke down under
the duties of an office really beyond his strength.
He died on the eighteenth of April, 1917. On re-
ceiving the news Cardinal Mercier wrote:

"Baron von Bissing was a Christian. He said to
me one day, I remember, in a tone that placed his
sincerity beyond all doubt: 'I am not a Catholic,
but I believe in Christ.' To the Christ, therefore, I
shall pray, and very sincerely, for the repose of his
soul."

In despair of winning Monsignor Mercier as an
ally, von Bissing had long since taken position as an
open adversary of the Cardinal's policies and influ-
ence; but he had, as a rule, remained a polite ad-
versary. His successor, Baron von Falkenhausen,
was at no pains to mask his Teutonic brusqueness
under pretenses of courtesy and consideration. Un-
der his rule a measure long contemplated by the
Germans the separation of Flanders from the
Walloon district was almost put into execution.

A FIGHTING CARDINAL

Such a step would have been tantamount to dis-
memberment of the Belgium for which the Cardinal
had toiled and suffered, and he opposed the project
with all his might, even, at one moment, appealing
to the Pope to exert moral influence in support of
his demands. Though he could not bring the Ger-
mans to abandon their policy altogether, he at least
succeeded in having the status quo respected.

To save himself in advance from the Cardinal's
interference, von Falkenhausen gave him to under-
stand that he would consent to discuss with him
only matters bearing strictly on religion; though this
definition of his position did not make him any the
readier to discuss the arbitrary imprisonment of
dignitaries of the Church in the Cardinal's diocese.
Fortunately von der Lancken remained the inter-
mediary between the two powers. If the man's
mania for endless argument often wearied the Car-
dinal, he was, nevertheless, easy to get along with,
and Monsignor Mercier could speak his mind freely
to him. In dire straits toward the end of the occu-
pation, Germany thought of requisitioning such raw
material as could be found in Belgian churches -
copper vessels, the metal in organs and bells, even
the wool in hospital mattresses. It was through
Baron von der Lancken that Cardinal Mercier suc-
ceeded in obtaining mitigations of these odious
measures.

190 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

Regardless of his treatment at the hands of the
German authorities, the Cardinal treated individ-
ual Germans with a charity that at times attained a
most exquisite delicacy.

One day he was traversing his cathedral, dressed
as a simple priest and attended by one of his asso-
ciates, when his eyes fell on a young lieutenant of
the army of occupation who was standing in admi-
ration before the beautiful canvas by Rubens that
adorns one of the altars. Turning to his companion
he asked what he thought the age of the young man
might be. The question was in Latin. To the Car-
dinal's surprise, the young officer answered;

"Diem natalem vicesimam hodie MechUnitz ha-
beo. (I am celebrating my twentieth birthday here
in Malines to-day.)"

The prelate smiled, wished the young lieutenant
many happy recurrences of the day and invited him
to come and share his dinner. At table he questioned
the boy regarding his family and his schooling
and finally asked what he thought of life in the
trenches :

"Ego dormlo, et cor meum vigilat" the young
man replied. "I sleep it is my heart that keeps
awake."

Tears glistened in the eyes of the old Arch-
bishop. When the youth took leave to go back to

A FIGHTING CARDINAL 191

his post, Monsignor Mercier gave him his bless-
ing, though he was not a Catholic :

"My blessing, not as from an archbishop of the
Church, but as from an old man, who always tried
to do his duty, and is eager to encourage a young
man who is going out to do his. Go, under God's
care, and may He protect you !"

Just as the lieutenant was clmbing into the train
which was to carry him back to the trenches, an ec-
clesiast appeared and gave him a package containing
fruit, some dainties, and a book the "Carmina
Horatii." On a marked page, the prelate had under-
lined four verses :

Virtus, recludens immeritis mori
Coelum, negata tentat iter via,
Coetusque vulgares et udam
Spernit humum fugiente penna.

Meanwhile the prisons in Germany were packed
with priests and monks who were undergoing the
harshest discipline, usually for having aided young
men to escape to the Belgian army. Upon the civil
population privations of all sorts were weighing
more cruelly than ever. Once more the Cardinal
strove to hearten his people by a pastoral in which
he pointed out that sorrow patiently endured brings
one closer to God : that God, whether we like it or

192 A LIFE OE CARDINAL MERCIER

not, reveals Himself master through events which
come to pass beyond all human calculation and en-
deavor: finally, that God crowns torture and death
with resurrection.

At last the campaign by General Foch opened and
the Germans began retreating uninterruptedly in all
eastern France. From that moment things moved
rapidly. As early as October I, the occupiers of
Belgium realized that they were lost. It would now
be to their interest to heap attentions upon the great
Cardinal, whose influence might count in making
their withdrawal easier. The cathedral at Malines
still bore traces of bombardment and of a fire which
the enemy had set in an effort to destroy it. The
governor now sent an emissary to Monsignor Mer-
cier with an offer of pecuniary compensation for
the damage. But the Archbishop drew himself up
proudly :

"We shall soon be asking for an accounting;
meantime, we shall accept no alms from the Ger-

mans."

On the seventeenth of October, von der Lancken
called again. He desired to negotiate in advance cer-
tain arrangements relative to the peace that was
obviously near at hand.

The Archbishop had always received the baron
standing, each of them remaining at respective ends

A FIGHTING CARDINAL 193

of a small audience-room. On this occasion he in-
vited his visitor to sit down.

"Hitherto," he said, "I have been unable to over-
look the fact that you were an enemy. To-day you
are my guest: I receive you according to the laws
of Belgian hospitality."

On departing the baron left in the Cardinal's
hands a memorandum couched in the following
terms :

"In our eyes you are the living impersonation of a
people which reveres you as its pastor and heeds you
as its counselor. It is to you, therefore, that the
governor-general and my government have directed
me to report that, on our evacuation of your terri-
tory, we surrender to you, spontaneously and of our
own free will, all Belgians who have been impris-
oned or deported for resistance to our authority.
They will be at liberty to return to their homes,
some of them as early as next Monday, the twenty-
first current. Since this announcement will, I am
sure, bring joy to your heart, I esteem it a personal
privilege to deliver it to you, all the more since I
have not been able to live for four years among the
Belgians without learning to esteem them and to ap-
preciate their patriotism at its just worth."

On November n, Germany's defeat was consum-

194 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

mated. Cardinal Mercier could not fail to celebrate
in all magnificence an event which he had foreseen
and prophesied with such trusting assurance. A cir-
cular brief carried his paean of deliverance to every
nook in Belgium :

"After four years of arrogance, injustice, cruelty,
perfidy, they lie prostrate ! On Monday, the eleventh
of November, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the
bells of the city of Malines all broke forth in joy
to chime their hymn of victory. On Monday, the
eleventh of November, at three o'clock in the after-
noon, the flag of our country unfurled above the
tower of Saint-Rombaut, opening out its folds
toward Termonde and Gand, beckoning back into
our midst again our King and his soldiers. Informa-
tion has come to hand that on Tuesday next, the
nineteenth of November, 1918, Albert the Mag-
nanimous will return as conqueror to his capital. The
triumph of justice is complete. The conscience of
mankind is vindicated.

"Glory be to God, beloved brethren ! Glory be to
His justice ! May the people of Belgium, may the
victors, may the vanquished, be mindful of it for-
ever!"

Obediently, no doubt, the Belgian nation heark-
ened to the voice of its pastor at that moment. But
while showing proper deference to God's justice,

A FIGHTING CARDINAL 195

in their hearts they felt an imperious need to vow
imperishable gratitude to the man who had made
possible its reign on earth at the cost of untold
effort, disappointment, and sacrifice.

CHAPTER IX

A WORLD'S IDOL

WHILE King Albert I, at the climactic mo-
ment of his reentry into Brussels, was pub-
licly thanking Cardinal Mercier for his support of
the throne and for his inestimable services to Bel-
gium, and while the country was outdoing itself in
admiration of the great churchman who had been its
savior, the Cardinal's one desire was that the hom-
age which was being paid to him should be turned to
One higher than he. God, he declared, at the behest
of Mary, mediatrix of all Grace, had delivered Bel-
gium ! And he held to this point till a national offer-
ing to the Sacred Heart of Jesus had been decreed
by the government. The Cardinal himself laid the
corner-stone of the votive temple on the plateau of
Keokelberg, the twenty-ninth of June, 1919. His
thought was that the temple should commemorate
both the victory of the Belgians and the centenary
of their independence. The ceremonies took place
in the presence of all the Belgian bishops and an
assembly of a hundred thousand people. Those who
heard him that day in vibrant voice glorifying the

196

AWORLD'SIDOL 197

Soldier-King of the Yser for the victory, thanking
the gracious Queen for her devotion to the welfare
of humble soldiers, or offering the homage of vic-
torious Belgium to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, could
gain some conception of the superhuman influence
his eloquence exerted on a throng.

Other nations besides Belgium, however, were
eager to show their affection for the Cardinal.
France awarded him a seat in her Academy of
Moral and Political Sciences, and invited him to
'Paris to receive an appropriate tribute in person.
Meantime M. Poincare, the President, hurried to
Belgium to pay his respects to the great bishop in
the mutilated cathedral at Malines.

"In barbaric times," said the French executive
on that occasion, "the bishops of the Church were
the defenders of their cities. That you have been in
our times. Speaking from the eminence of your
cathedra, you expressed the thoughts of oppressed
Belgium in imperishable phrases. You did more than
that: you spoke in the name of Justice itself, and
your words resounded throughout the civilized
world."

Numberless messages of gratitude and admira-
tion poured in from the countries across the seas.
The peoples of the United States and Canada were
eager to look upon the face of this aged man, whose
quiet voice had held the most formidable military

A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

power in the world at bay for four years. And he
consented to give those allies of his country his
supreme testimonial of Belgian friendship. Accom-
panied by Monsignor Deploige and Canon Vran-
cken, he sailed for America in September, 1919. At
first he was puzzled at finding himself the object of
so many personal ovations and tried to avoid at
least such demonstrations as he deemed excessive.
Afterwards he judged it more fitting to state, on
each occasion, just what acts of his own or on the
part of his clergy might in some degree seem en-
titled to the esteem of foreigners. To have done his
plain duty was his sole merit in his own eyes. If
people insisted on praising him for that, very well !
In a speech delivered at Philadelphia, he said:

"I am beginning to understand the affectionate at-
tentions you are showering upon me. You Americans
conceive of a pastor, not as a man who withdraws
from the world to groan in solitary prayer, but as a
man who inspires and supports his people. Well,
each of us has a post assigned him in this world,
and at that post his duty lies. When I tried to pro-
tect my parishioners from invasion, when I kept
their moral obligations before their eyes, when I
visited our cities and towns to organize measures of
relief, when my clergy joined the ranks as chaplains
or as members of the Red Cross, when my priests
took upon themselves the support of fatherless chil-

AWORLD'SIDOL 199

dren, what were we doing but our duty? But you
Americans are in the habit of doing your duty. That
must be why you appreciated our efforts and ap-
plauded us. . . ."

The quality that most impressed the Cardinal
during his weeks in the United States was the in-
stinct for liberty that he seemed to find in all Ameri-
cans.

Late in October he paid rapid visits to the prin-
cipal cities of Canada. Everywhere, at Toronto, at
Montreal, at Ottawa, at Quebec, bishops, magis-
trates, citizens of all classes and all faiths, crowded
about him to acclaim him as one of the saviors of
civilization. What most touched the former pro-
fessor of Louvain, both in Canada and the United
States, was the homage paid him by the universities
in numberless honorary degrees.

A pressing call from Paris was awaiting him at
the end of his return voyage the formal admission
to the Institute, which circumstances had so long
postponed. As at Philadelphia, but this time at
greater length, the Cardinal dwelt upon the case of
Belgium as an example of passionate attachment to
duty. Then he went on to pay a magnificent tribute
to France, the sister-in-arms of his country:

"Let us hold our hearts aloft, a preceding speaker
has commanded us. Let us learn to await serenely

200 A LIFE OF CARDINAL' MERCIER

the complete unfolding of the plans of Him who
bids us have faith in the wisdom of His guidance!
If to-day, gentlemen, I venture to utter words of
such austerity in the presence of men like you, it is
because those words are but an abstract summary of
things that your France has actually done. Other
nations have been having their hours of glory and
brilliant achievement; but in France all of you, citi-
zens and rulers alike, marshals and simple soldiers
in the armies of land and the armies of sea, the
clergy of all ranks, the lay population of all parties,
never faltering for an instant, whether in retreat
or on the advance, whether in adversity or in tri-
umph, toiled unflinching at your arduous task, your
hearts steadfast upon glory. These four years of
war have been one continuous act of heroism on the
part of the people of France. Among all the nations
of the globe, the nation that is the most attractive
and the most beautiful, the nation that is greatest in
the influence of its thinking, in the precision and
charm of its language, in the smiling bravery of its
soldiers, in the chivalry of its manners, in the en-
thusiasm of its apostleship, in the fruitfulness of its
Christian endeavor, is beyond doubt your nation,
France!"

In their response the members of the Institute
rose to equal heights of generosity and courtesy.

AWORLD'SIDOL 201

M. Imbart de la Tour, of the Committee for the
Restoration of the Library of Louvain, asked his
fellow-academicians to join in that enterprise, and
M. fCmile Boutroux, in an inspired impromptu,
lauded the prelate who had "forced brute violence
to its knees." The next day, all Catholic Paris
flocked to Notre-Dame to hear the Cardinal, whose
tall, lank figure never seemed taller and more ma-
jestic than in the pulpit once occupied by Lacordaire.
The French capital, meantime, had taken up the
epithet bestowed on him by M. Charles Maurras in
the "Action Francaise": "Le grand Juste!"

Such testimonials coming to him from all corners
of the earth left Monsignor Mercier the simple
soul he had always been, or, if anything, humbler
than before. His one thought now was to be back
as soon as possible in his diocese. But, as the event
proved, he was hardly freer in Malines than he had
been in Paris or in Montreal from the pursuit of ad-
miring foreigners. If he lent himself to this ap-
parently endless homage, it was not, certainly, out
of any human vanity. He knew that after all those
years of war, numberless families were nursing still
bleeding wounds. The visits he received not infre-
quently afforded him opportunity to dispense the
consolations of his religion far and wide. One eve-
ning, at a very late hour, after a day crowded with

202 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

important audiences, he granted one last interview
to some newspaper men. They were to learn the
secret of his patience from his own lips.

"Yes, I do feel tired after all these visits; yet, St.
Paul teaches us that it is as much our duty to rejoice
with those who rejoice as it is to weep with those
who weep."

The Cardinal had for a long time been acquainted
with a distinguished French writer, Victor Giraud,
whom he had been encouraging in a plan for writ-
ing a "History of the Great War." The work was
now finished and a copy of it came into the Cardi-
nal's hands. On one of the pages he must have read
the following lines about himself:

"The Archbishop of Malines faced Germany
oolly, resolutely, audaciously, demanding from her
his full right, especially the right to do his full duty ;
he spoke, he wrote, protecting, organizing, consol-
ing. Over four years' time, this tall, lean prelate,
with the pale, ascetic countenance, the deep burning
eyes the grandest figure in the Catholic world of
our day-^may be said, along with King Albert, to
have personified the very soul of sturdy little Bel-
gium."

The portrait was true enough to life; but the
prelate found it too flattering and penned this
friendly remonstrance to the author:

"As for your page 269, I think I can forgive you

AWORLD'SIDOL 203

for it, since I know that your intentions were of the
kindliest; but I must tell you that, as I read it, my
guardian angel was constrained to whisper a prayer
in my ear: 'O Lord, lead us not into tempta-
tion!'"

But there was work to be done, after the first
hour of exultance was over. As was the case with
the rest of Belgium, great stretches of the diocese
of Malines lay in ruins. The prelate furnished a
slogan for the work of restoration in his pastoral
of the year 1920 called "Let us rebuild." This was
followed the next year by another designed to fore-
stall any faltering in the costly task: "What are
we doing?"

Other nations, as well as Belgium, had been vic-
tims of the war and the Belgian Cardinal was the
spokesman to whom all supplicants turned. In 1919,
he raised his voice in behalf of the orphans of all
countries; in 1920, for the refugees of Poland; and
in 1921, for destitute Russians and famine-stricken
China; for the Russians again in 1922, and in 1923
for the victims of the Japanese earthquake. All his
appeals, whether in the form of circulars or of
charges, were read religiously, sometimes avidly; be-
cause his clear, vigorous, incisive language, often
singularly forceful or picturesque, and always far
removed from the old-fashioned ecclesiastical

204 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

grandiloquence, laid hold upon his readers directly,
went straight to the heart.

With the coming of peace the struggles of the old
political parties were only waiting for an excuse to
burst forth anew, and doctrinal questions shortly
forced themselves imperiously upon the Cardinal's
attention. During the war Monsignor Mercier had
extolled the papacy, defending it against the attacks
directed, whenever events furnished a pretext, now
upon Pius X and now upon Benedict XV. At this
moment he considered it extremely important to
create an atmosphere of friendly cooperation in Bel-
gium, and he decided to remind his countrymen of
the social teachings propounded by the Popes. In
1923, he published his letter on "The Papacy and
Christian Socialism in the light of the encyclical
'Ubi arcano Dei.' "

Monsignor Mercier was a syndicalist; that is to
say, he saw in the syndicate, in the corporation, in
laws regulating housing and alcohol, in institutions
of education and recreation for the masses, the best
preventives of class conflicts. Though opposed to
certain demands of the labor parties, he neither con-
demned these as a whole nor dismissed them with-
out distinction.

"If Socialism," said he, "had no other objective
than to organize the property of this or that social
group on a collective basis, there would be no seri-

A WORLD'S IDOL 205

ous objection to it, provided, of course, it did not
pretend to make its system universal, provided it
were willing to practise collective ownership for it-
self, allowing private property to exist elsewhere.
Have not the most perfect of our Catholic societies,
those under the patronage of St. Benedict, St. Fran-
cis of Assisi, St. Dominick, St. Ignatius de Loyola,
and St. Francis de Sales, realized the communistic
dream each individual working according to his
powers and each receiving according to his needs?

"I hold that wage-earners who earn an honest
living by their toil are entitled to as much respect as
writers, magistrates, army officers, deputies, sena-
tors, priests, bishops, as any one, in short, in the
so-called 'category of intellectuals.' To both groups
I extend a friendly hand and, if I were to make any
distinction between them, my preference would go
to the one who grasped my hand, not as an act of
mere politeness, but in an impulse of spontaneous
and generous friendship."

These words of conciliation were especially op-
portune in Belgium in the year 1923. Not only
might the class conflict there as elsewhere have
taken a desperately bitter turn; but the country
had been torn since the days of von Bissing by an
antagonism of races and of provinces which threat-
ened to develop into civil war.

206 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

The efforts of the Germans to foment separatist
tendencies in the Flemish provinces had met with
some success, and the vague antipathy which stirred
Fleming against Walloon had been greatly aggra-
vated since the conclusion of peace. The clergy it-
self, in some of the northern districts, was fostering
the Flemish movement. As chief of a diocese which
embraced the Belgian capital with a large territory
predominantly French in language, and the cities
of Antwerp and Malines distinctly Flemish in lan-
guage and feeling, Monsignor Mercier did not find
it easy to maintain harmony even in his own flock.
Despite his eminent services during the war, some of
his parishioners went so far as to say that the dio-
cese should have a cardinal of Flemish birth. Hurt
by this petty captiousness on the part of some of his
children and to avert quarrels of which he was able
better than any one else to appreciate the dangers,
he addressed himself more trustfully than ever to
the "Mother of God, mediatrix of all Grace."

Constant and tender devotion to the Virgin had
always been part of his religion. His dream was now
to add another jewel to her celestial crown. In the
year 1921, a Marial Synod met at his call in Brus-
sels, and studied the role of the Virgin Mary as the
mediary between this world and her divine Son. The
Cardinal's purpose here, with the support of all
the bishops of Belgium and of numerous foreign

A WORLD'S IDOL 207

prelates, as well as of the authorities on doctrine at
the University of Louvain, was to define a dogma
of "Mary the intercessor" and formulate it for
acceptance by the Church. Monsignor Mercier was
not to live to see this hope realized; but he had the
joy, that same year, of obtaining from the Pope, as
a special honor to the diocese of Malines, the right
to perform the mass and the office of the Very
Holy Virgin, to be worshiped under the title he pro-
posed.

Merely as a bishop, Monsignor Mercier was
hardly equal to the multitudinous tasks imposed
upon him ; yet the former professor, the philospher,
the man of letters, could not always evade pressing
invitations to enrich this or that academic confer-
ence with the precious contribution of his own
learning. Happening to be in Rome in December
of the year 1920, he consented to deliver an ad-
dress at the celebration- of the fifteenth centenary
of the death of St. Jerome (on the I9th of that
month), sketching the moral physiognomy of that
saintly teacher and showing himself as judicious as a
historian as he was penetrating as a psychologist.
On June sixth of the following year, he spoke on
"The Poetic Genius of Dante," before the Royal
Academy of Belgium. Here was a vast and compli-
cated subject; but, long before that, Professor Mer-
cier had grasped the lofty theological foundations

208 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

of the "Divine Comedy" and he was now able to
present a most happy elucidation of the philosoph-
ical sources of Dante's art.

These diversions were but interludes in difficult
administrative labors. The years were going by
without bringing Belgium the prosperity and tran-
quillity she had expected from her victory. Here
and there complaints were rising against a situation
which continued distressing, without a correspond-
ing spirit of economy in the people or a zeal for
production at all calculated to heal the nation's
troubles. In February, 1924, the Cardinal accord-
ingly published a boldly critical yet cheering letter
on "Our Disappointments after the War faith all
the same !" Here again as always he was the leader
of indefatigable determination! He had defended
Belgium against Germany. He would be just as stub-
born in defending her against herself!

Not that, with all these local cares and preoccupa-
tions, the Cardinal's figure had shrunken to the
proportion of his diocese. His glory was literally
now filling the world. Heads of governments, gen-
erals, diplomats, authors of all nations and all lan-
guages, inevitably found their way to Belgium as on
pilgrimages, to the palace in Malines, where they
could find the priest who had done more honor to
humanity than any prelate in centuries. The Car-
dinal's secretary lost all count of the decorations of

A .WORLD'S IDOL 209

one kind or another that came in from the most
varied sources grand cordons, foreign knight-
hoods, honorary degrees, honorary citizenships,
freedoms of cities. Cardinal Mercier was no longer
the soul of Belgium merely: he was becoming a
symbol of humanity at large in its loftiest, noblest,
most resplendent qualities.

As springtime of the year 1924 came on, the
Cardinal's priests and parishioners remembered that
he had been ordained just fifty years before. Time
indeed was doing its relentless work with him : the
prelate's tall figure was stooping unmistakably now,
and the hair crowning his stately forehead was turn-
ing frankly white. It was a special joy and pride
for Belgium, however, that the proposal of a jubilee
was put forward not from Brussels but from Rome.
The moment Pius XI heard of the anniversary, he
despatched a brief to Monsignor Mercier, rehears-
ing the various phases of his career in superlatives
very rare on the lips of the pontiffs.

"Obeying a spontaneous 'prompting of our heart,"
Pius wrote, "we have desired (permit us to say as
much) to take the lead in all the joyous demonstra-
tions of which you are shortly to be the recipient;
for not in glorious Belgium alone, but in other na-
tions also, we may be sure, admirers will rise in
throngs to do homage to your great virtues."

In fact when King Albert published a message

210 A LIFE OF. CARDINAL MERCIER

to Cardinal Mercier, once more expressing his ad-
miration and regard for the illustrious prelate, "a
model of the highest virtues of his calling and the
impersonation of our national honor," the heads of
the principal Catholic nations, the marshals of the
World War Foch, de Castelnau, Fayolle, Gouraud
ambassadors, ministers, academies, all began send-
ing their best wishes and congratulations to the
great pastor.

On May 12, 1924, the day of the religious cere-
mony, the Cathedral of Saint-Rombaut gathered the
most representative citizens of Belgium into its vast
nave to do honor to the fearless apostle and to the
"savior of his country." What a contrast between
the mass he had conducted fifty years before on the
modest altar of Braine-l'Alleud in the presence of a
humble congregation of neighbors, and the august
ceremony of that anniversary day, when the Car-
dinal, clothed in his sumptuous purple with a glit-
tering miter on his head, stood in a company of high
ecclesiastical dignitaries, opposite a great assem-
blage of magistrates and officers grouped about a
royal throne! After an impressive service sung to
the Gregorian plain-chant, an endless procession of
bishops, abbes, canons, priests, escorted the Cardinal
to the great hall of the Hotel de Ville. It was in
his speech on the latter occasion that this prince
of the Church, having touched one of the pinnacles

A WORLD'S IDOL 211

of human honor, paid tribute, it will be remembered,
"to his mother, his saintly mother." However, after
recounting the principal episodes of his long life
with a modesty emphasized by a fervent note of
thanksgiving, he ended, as was his habit, with apos-
tolic counsel :

u ln view of my age and that intimacy of the heart
which unites us at this moment, you may allow me to
betray a secret: like every one else, I have known
joy and I have known suffering in the course of my
life : but never have I been unhappy. Whether in the
years of peace or in the years of war, whether in
poverty or in prosperity, whether in failure or in
success, at no time have I ceased to feel, deep down
jjn my heart, a sense of tranquillity, confidence,
peace.

"I should like to see all of you happy too: and
since I owe you a debt of gratitude, I must try to
repay you. I am eager to share with you that which
seems to me the most precious of my possessions.
It is a secret that opens a path to the very fountain-
head of Christian serenity. It is simply this: sur-
render yourselves in trusting abandonment to the
goodness of God."

Only ecclesiasts attended the banquet which fol-
lowed at the prelate's old school, the Lower Sem-
inary. At that gathering, the most intimate of all,
the Cardinal rendered touching tribute to two bish-

212 A LIFE OF CARDINAL M E R C I E R

ops of his diocese, Monsignor Legraine and Mon-
signor de Wachter, who had shared his labors
over so many years. Funds had come in from a
public subscription, launched by some of his friends,
to erect a statue to the prelate who was surely the
purest glory of the country. But the Cardinal
checked that plan with a word the contributions
were diverted to an endowment for a Latin school
(the College Cardinal Mercier) at Braine-l'Alleud
in his native parish. The idea of the statue was not
revived till August, 1926, and then at the instance
of a committee in France.

Hardly had the ceremonies at Malines come to an
end, hardly had the echoes of acclamation died away
when there, in the cathedral that had witnessed his
glorification, girt about with fading garlands and
half-burned tapers, the Cardinal was at work again
this time on arrangements for a synod of his
diocese. Nothing could have been more characteris-
tic! Could anything induce him to postpone "the
duty of the present moment"?

*

If the Cardinal's great renown after the war
attracted people to him from all over the world, it
was not always a question of homage. He was fre-
quently besought to throw light on perplexities or
to arbitrate disputes. So, in the year 1921, he was
solicited by influential personages of the Church of

A WORLD'S IDOL 213

England to join them in devising some means for
restoring their Church to unity with Rome. Sus-
tained efforts had been made in that direction even
during the pontificate of Leo XIII. But at that time
an initiative on the part of Lord Halifax, seconded
by a priest of the English Mission, Abbe Portal,
had been halted by a pontifical edict denying valid-
ity to Anglican ordinations. In the year 1920, how-
ever, two hundred and fifty bishops of the various
Protestant communions met at Lambeth and ad-
dressed a sort of encyclical to the Christian world
announcing that the Church of England would
gladly enter upon negotiations with other churches
with a view to arriving at Christian unity.

This move revived the hopes of Lord Halifax
and Abbe Portal. But who, on the Catholic side,
would be likely to smooth the path for such confer-
ences? Cardinal Mercier was then at the height
of his popularity. In agreement with Abbe Portal,
Lord Halifax called on the Belgian prelate and
begged him to offer his palace for a meeting between
authorized representatives of Roman Catholicism,
to be designated by him, and some of the best
qualified members of the Church of England. Some-
what surprised at first, the Cardinal finally took
kindly to the idea. Lord Halifax came back, accord-
ingly, early in September (1921). With him were
two prominent Anglicans: Dr. Robinson, Dean of

214 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

Wells, an intimate of the Archbishop of Canter-
bury, and Dr. Frere, thereafter Bishop of Truro.
They were met by Monsignor Mercier, assisted by
the Abbe Portal and by his learned vicar-general,
Monsignor Van Roey. There was another meeting
in the palace at Malines in March, 1923, and still
a third in November of the same year : though with
the Anglican group on these occasions came the
celebrated Dr. Gore, former Bishop of Oxford, and
Dr. Kidd, one of the most notable scholars of the
famous university. Monsignor Mercier, on his side,
had called in from Paris Monsignor Batiffol and
the Abbe Hemmer, ecclesiasts renowned as experts
in the early history of Christianity.

It was agreed from the outset that the parleys
would have no official character, that they would
remain private conversations in a private home;
but it was known that the Archbishop of Canter-
bury was following them with liveliest interest, and
the sympathetic attitude of Monsignor Mercier led
to the belief that a rapprochement was in sight.
What took place at these meetings, which have since
been famous as the "Conversations of Malines"?
Both sides were pledged to secrecy, at least until
otherwise agreed; and, so far, the pledge has been
faithfully kept. But the Cardinal himself has stated
that views were exchanged in an atmosphere of
friendly confidence, well calculated at some later

A WORLD'S IDOL 215

day to unite minds as closely as hearts already
were.

"We reminded one another," he confides," that if
truth has its rights, charity has its duties. It was
our thought that perhaps, by talking with perfect
frankness and bearing in mind that in an historical
conflict protracted over centuries all the wrongs
were not necessarily on one side, and by defining
the issues involved on moot points, we might elimi-
nate certain prejudices, certain feelings of distrust,
dissipate certain misunderstandings, and open the
road at the end of which a loyal heart, aided by
divine grace, might, were it God's pleasure so, dis-
cover or recover the truth.

"In point of fact the closing hour of each of
our three meetings found us more closely attached
to one another, more trustful of one another, than
we had been at our first contacts. ... At the mo-
ment of separation our comrades all departed with
uplifted hearts."

The Cardinal evidently did not consider it dis-
creet to say that, captivated by his qualities of great-
ness, Lord Halifax had vowed him a friendship
which could end only in death. One of the Anglican
representatives wrote shortly afterwards:

"It was perhaps for the first time in four hun-
dred years that Protestant and Catholic scholars
had been able to sit for hours together discussing

2l6 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

most serious intellectual differences with absolute
frankness, without the cordiality of their contacts
'being troubled for an instant, or their confidence in
the future shaken."

To be sure, "union of hearts" and "unity of
faith" are not the same thing. But through his per-
fect affability, his marvelous gifts of observation
and understanding, the breadth of his theological
and philosophical learning, Cardinal Mercier had
done more, perhaps, in a few hours to lead the
Church of England back to the Roman fold than
the controversialists who had been trying for cen-
turies to reduce it with hammer-blows from their:
ponderous apologetics.

One of the Anglicans, indeed, remarked on his
return from Malines :

"It would be difficult for any one who does not
live in England to appreciate the influence which
the results so far obtained will have upon public
opinion. Even if actual progress has been slight, I
believe it will by all means mark a point of depar-
ture for further progress, and that we shall have the
best of reasons for thanking God for it."

"Public opinion" did, in fact, demand a resump-
tion of those Conversations of Malines which had
given rise to such hopes; and it desired that they
be again inspired and guided by the saintly Cardinal

A WORLD'S IDOL 217

who had succeeded in making them so agreeable
and already so profitable.

Providence, however, had other plans. The
worthy servant had sown the seed. For some other
the joy of the harvest !

CHAPTER X

THE SAINT

CARDINAL MERCIER was first and fore-
most a man of faith, of ardent piety. His
reverence for the Holy of Holies transpired hardly
more from the dignity and majesty of his attitudes
during pontifical functions, than from the fervor of
his personal worship in the seclusion of his private
chapel. Up at five o'clock, at all seasons of the year,
even in midwinter when it was extremely cold, he
would go directly to his oratory, and there, kneel-
ing on his prayer-stool, body erect, head slightly
bowed, he would pass an hour in prayer before the
Host. Next came mass, which he would celebrate in
the presence of his household, but slowly, gravely,
always with a certain touch of tenderness that left
his hearers deeply moved. And after mass he usu-
ally devoted a full quarter of an hour to more
prayers of thanksgiving. The breviary he preferred
to recite in the evening, walking along the paths of
his palace garden in the silence of that quiet hour.
Were there interruptions at such times or distrac-
tions due, perhaps, to some noisy ceremony, or to

218

THE SAINT 219

some tumultuous concourse he experienced posi-
tive spiritual discomfort as though somehow he
himself had been at fault. After midday luncheon
came another visit to the Host before he resumed
work, and still a third at six o'clock, when he spent
half an hour in prayers. The modest repast at the
end of the day was immediately followed by a recita-
tion of the rosary in the chapel, the Cardinal and
his household chanting in unison. Then after re-
ceiving his blessing his servants would withdraw for
the night, but he himself would continue meditations
for .twenty minutes more, never leaving the sanc-
tuary before ten o'clock. Thence he would retire to
a plain straw mattress which was the only kind of
bed he ever used.

Such fervent love of his God has as its logical
corollary a tender love of his fellow-men the
Cardinal's whole life was an incessant giving of
himself, either to his students or to his parishioners.
,Yet a hankering for studious solitude was always
one of the inclinations to which he confessed.
Toward the end of his career he often dreamed of
passing his last years in the silence of some abbey.
One may easily imagine what it actually cost him to
remain for long hours, daily, during his whole ca-
reer as an archbishop, at the disposition of visitors
often most humble ones, not to mention down-
right time-wasters. He was concerned that no one,

220 A LIFE OF, CARDINAL MERCIER

not even the very least of his flock, should ever
cross the threshold of his palace without being
granted the favor of seeing him, even though this
sometimes meant delaying a meal for an hour or
two. People who had never seen him before some-
times approached him with trepidation; but, the
interview over, they would always go away with one
feeling :

"How kind the Cardinal, and how simple! And
I was so afraid at first!"

He had a predilection for "guidance of souls."
Despite the heavy duties that burdened him, es-
pecially toward the end of his life, he could never
bring himself to withhold from any one who im-
plored it the ultranatural succor he dispensed as a
priest. He granted long interviews to priests, theo-
logical students, working-women, ladies of society,
nuns, even giving them permission to -write to him,
and devoting long hours, when necessary, to his re-
plies. The spectacle of divine grace upwelling in a
human soul was for him one of the supreme splen-
dors of life. He regarded the soul as something in-
finitely precious to be handled with the utmost
delicacy and attention. Charity toward the lowly was
one of his fundamental impulses. One day while
traversing the poorer sections of Malines where
poverty and squalor struck the eye, he remarked to
an associate:

THE SAINT 221

"One of my great regrets is that I have not been
able to live my whole life as cure in some poor
parish where I could always be alleviating distress."

If his interest in organized relief for prisoners
and deportees during the war is well enough known,
few probably are aware of the intimately personal
character he gave to such work, which abounded in
touching incidents. On one occasion, at a time when
the Germans were requisitioning all mattresses, he
learned that a man and a woman were lying at the
point of death in a garret in the slums of Malines.

"I must go and see them at once," he said.

And he sat at the bedside of the dying couple for
a long time, consoling them, working about in the
kitchen with the children whom he left well pro-
vided with money, and then visiting the German
authorities to make certain the poor family would
not be disturbed in its sorrow.

Whenever married couples celebrated their golden
weddings in Malines, they were always invited to
the Cardinal's palace. There he would engage them
in friendly conversation, question them as to the
incidents of their happy lives, serve them luncheon
at his table, and finally send them away with some
little gift as a souvenir of their archbishop. Atten-
tions equally delicate, equally personal, he displayed
for children taking their first communion. In the
days before the war, he regularly received them in

222 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

his palace, "gave them a party" with refreshments,
moved about among them, questioning every one,
trying to reach each little soul to plant some happy
memory, some bit of sound counsel, in it. Unfail-
ingly kind and affectionate toward his servants, he
always talked with them in Flemish, keeping in
touch with their home interests and activities, mak-
ing sure their means corresponded to their needs,
cracking jokes with them familiarly without a trace
of condescension or affectation, always making them
feel at their ease.

For his ecclesiastical subordinates, especially
for his priests, Monsignor Mercier reserved the best
of his affections. The Abbe Lamal, the oldest clergy-
man in the diocese, became one hundred years of age
in the month of September, 1925. The Cardinal
planned a surprise for the old man. He invited him
to a birthday dinner at the archbishopric, and then
at dessert, after a repast enlivened by the rarest wit
and gaiety, informed his guest that he had ap-
pointed him to an honorary canonicate. Great em-
barrassment for the aged cure, who had never
dreamed of such a distinction ! He had no money,
moreover, and looked forward with some misgiving
to the inauguration ceremonies in the cathedral.
But, when one of his fellow-canons suggested lend-
ing him the regalia for his new position, the cen-
tenarian was able to reply :

THE SAINT 223

"Do you know, it's not necessary! His Eminence
has provided me with a hood, a pectoral, and
everything!"

To celebrate his jubilee more familiarly with the
boys in his old Lower Seminary and in the choir-
school of Saint-Rombaut, he proposed a picnic at
iBraine-l'Alleud. The farmers of the neighborhood
insisted on providing transport and sent in to
Malines a number of their auto-trucks all lettered
with the advertisements of their farm products. The
cardinal could not be kept from "piling in" with the
others, and it was in a humble farm wagon that he
appeared in his home town to celebrate his world-
famous anniversary in the church of his first mass.
.The trucks were more crowded than ever on the
return trip. One of the boys could not find a seat;
but the Cardinal called to him:

"Here! There's room here! Sit on my lap!"

Monsignor Mercier was a humble man any
number of incidents might be cited to show his hu-
mility, which was based on a keen sense of the noth-
ingness of humanity and of the everythingness of
God, of the insignificance of human things when
taken apart from service of God. That was why he
could accept honors without ever being dazzled by
them, why he could make the most of his abilities
while remaining wholly attached to God in the ut-

224 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

most simplicity of soul. Unconcerned about himself,
detached from self, he was all the less concerned
about worldly things, especially about worldly goods
in any form. When he died the newspapers published
photographs of his bedroom. Every one could see
that no monastic cell ever contained plainer furni-
ture or a harder cot than the lodging elected by this
oracle of a nation, this beacon among the lights of
the Church. A like poverty he would have also in
his clothing, which was rarely new, and in his table
which he restricted to one dish of meat and vege-
tables and from which wines were banished.

It would, however, be a mistake to infer that this
love of humility and poverty, this aversion to mag-
nificence, extended to things of the soul. Cardinal
Mercier could not tolerate commonplace virtues.
Nothing was so repugnant to him as mediocrity in
inclinations, habits, conduct. Even at the age of
seventy-five this aristocrat of the spirit could never
understand that average virtue is all that can be ex-
pected of the average of men. Instinctively drawn to
beauty, grandeur, nobility, creation, growth, reform,
he credited similar passions to every one. Anything
that suggested moral progress was certain to arouse
his enthusiasm. A former student, who knew him
intimately, wrote of him:

"His spiritual union with God purified his pas-
sions, but it did not diminish them. If his utterances

THE SAINT 225

during the war had the resonance that made them so
famous, that quality was due not only to the bold
precision of his thinking, but quite as much and even
more to the passion that glowed in all his words. He
was not just a learned parson finding fault with
others, nor a chief, either, giving orders to others.
Over and above everything else, he was a man, a
man vibrating in his whole being now with indigna-
tion, now with pity, now with revolt, a man serving
truth and justice with his whole soul, and free by
virtue of his very practice of self-restraint to give
full play to his enthusiasms."

The Cardinal was one of those great minds who
have no fear of the unknown, because they feel able
to cope with any situation that may arise. He lived,
one may say, at his own risk and peril all his life
long. So he was always encouraging his priests to
difficult undertakings, and then leaving them to their
own resources to find their way out.

A humble man who dealt with the humblest on
their plane, he had nevertheless an exalted concep-
tion of the dignity of an archbishop and a cardinal,
and this feeling was in keeping with a very keen
enjoyment of impressive ceremonials. Never was
the ritual observed with more care and splendor
than in his cathedral at Malines. Never did a prel-
ate set more store on brilliancy of ornament and
the happy ordering of processions. Losing himself

226 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

in humility at the moment of meditation or of
prayer, he acquired at the moment of action a clear
and acute sense of the authority he wielded in God's
name. Sometimes, indeed, it vexed him visibly to
be constrained to recognize any limits to that
authority. The fact was that he had a passionate
attachment to the Church, to the truth, to "souls."
This passion swept everything before it, imposed
itself on everything.

The Cardinal's personal aspect suggested a blend
of this inner passionateness with that exquisite
goodness of heart which the passing years seemed to
make more and more dominant in his character. It
was no longer a question of the tall, updarting and
from a distance at least somewhat stern figure of
the professor. The shoulders now drooped a little.
The head was turned slightly to one side, as though
in an attitude, now become habitual, of benevolent
attention. The magnetic quality, surely, lay in the
steady, deep-reaching gaze of his eyes which rested
fixedly upon the person to whom he was speaking
with a soft radiance that never faded. Gentleness,
good-will these traits one always carried away
from intimate talks with the prelate. At the mo-
ment he appeared as Cardinal in the Cathedral of
St. Rombaut, towering in the splendor of his purple,
preceded by the imposing theoria of his canons and
followed by the bearers of his standards, a sense

THE SAINT 227

of ineffable awe would fall upon his congregations,
and the words of the Psalmist would almost leap
to every lip : Ecce sacerdos magnus Lo, the High
Priest of the Lord !

! *

In November of the year 1925, Monsignor Bau-
drillart, president of the Catholic Institute in Paris,
arranged for the Archbishop of Malines one of
those encounters with scholars that were particularly
gratifying to the former president of the Thomist
Institute. The fiftieth anniversary of the Parisian
school fell on the twenty-sixth of that month and
Monsignor Mercier was invited to deliver an
address on the functions of Catholic universi-
ties. Cardinals Lugon, Dubois, and Touchet, the
bishops supporting the institute, and a further
audience of five thousand persons were to attend.

Leaving Brussels at eight in the morning, Cardi-
nal Mercier appeared at two o'clock in the audito-
rium of the Trocadero. The throng assembled gave
him a delirious ovation. Paying tribute in a few
graceful words to the teachers who had brought
fame to the Baudrillart Institute, he went on to
stress once more the importance of higher Chris-
tian education for the prestige of the Church, the
honor of the clergy, and the progress of civiliza-
tion. But finally the old and loyal friend of France
gained the upper hand, and he could only voice

228 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

the sentiments toward the faithful ally of his coun-
try, which still filled his heart:

"In the name of the bishops of Belgium," said
he, "I bring to the bishops of France, whose energy
and unselfishness we honor, and in the name of all
my countrymen I bring to the France we love, the
homage of our abiding admiration and affection.
Seven years separate us from the Armistice. In
that time how many of our memories have grown
dim, how many of our hopes have been disap-
pointed! And yet there is a vision that still stands
clear and sharp before our eyes : the alliance of our
two peoples for the triumph of righteousness, our
memory of the heroism of your soldiers, the thought
that you gave fifteen hundred thousand of your
children that justice might prevail over violence,
honor over bad faith ! This vision, this memory, this
thought, are and will remain the cement that binds
our two peoples together in union that union
which, according to the motto of my country, is
strength."

At eight o'clock in the evening of that same day,
the Cardinal attended the institute banquet, then
hurried to a train, and was back in Malines again
at one the following afternoon to entertain at
luncheon a committee of priests whom he had sum-
moned to a meeting. Could he have known at that
time that he was already suffering from an incur-

THE SAINT 229

able disease? There is no ground for thinking so.
It was probably the great exertions of those two
days, added to the fatigue from his routine work,
that occasioned a sudden aggravation of the mal-
ady. But though the Cardinal probably did not
suspect the seriousness of his condition, he had
surely for some weeks been increasingly preoccupied
with the thought of death.

Close associates had come upon him kneeling
more frequently than ever on his prayer-stool in
attitudes of humble supplication. One day, early in
November, he had called to his secretary, Canon
Dessain:

"Francis, are you ready? We're going for a
drive in the car!"

They started off toward Braine-l'Alleud. Just
as they were leaving M alines, the Cardinal dis-
cerned a bit of country that he had formerly known
very well.

"Over there," he remarked, "is where we used
to go on our walks when I was a student in the
seminary. But the landscape looks much prettier
from where we are now."

The car traversed the Forest of Soigne which
bounds one side of the great plain of Waterloo. A
moment later they were in Braine-l'Alleud.

As they passed the little Chateau du Castegier,
the peaceful abode of his childhood, the Cardinal

230 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

paused and gazed upon it with sadness in his eyes.
Then he went along on foot to the cemetery near by,
and prayed for a long time at the graves of his
father and mother.

Who can doubt it? It was a farewell pilgrimage.
He felt it to be such. To a man who had come to
request his attendance at a future meeting of a
society, he answered:

"I shall be glad to, if I am still alive."
He realized that his strength was ebbing. Never-
theless, he continued by sheer force of will to meet
his pastoral obligations, and the audiences he
granted in his palace were as numerous as ever.
One day an old friend, whom he had long served
as confessor, arrived from Louvain. After confes-
sion the Cardinal said:

"I should like to have a little talk with you. The
situation is this: I am sick. The doctors have taken
an X-ray. Humanly speaking, nothing can be done
it's cancer! I'm going to make the announcement
through the newspapers to prepare the public, you
understand. My friends urge me to ask God for a
cure. I shall not do so. ... And yet, you know,
there are great problems that lie very close to my
heart: the union of the Churches, the dogma of
Mary Mediatrix, the sanctification of my clergy.
Had it been God's will, I should have chosen to live
a few years longer to devote myself to these impor-

THESAINT 231

tant matters. As it is, I go away with a sense of
leaving things half done. ..."

The Cardinal had for some time been displaying
specially tender devotion to St. Theresa of Lisieux,
and an eager desire to practise her via parva, her
"minor method," of self-surrender. On December
8, when the doctors had finally allowed him to sus-
pect the graveness of his condition, he wrote to the
prioress of the convent at Lisieux, a Sister of the
young saint, as follows:

"My doctors have told me, to-day, that I am
suffering from cancer of the stomach. In the bottom
of my heart I bless the Lord for having something
to offer Him, through the hands of my Mother,
Our Lady of Sorrows, and in all earnestness I
repeated the Magnificat conjoined with the canticle
of my Mother in Heaven. At no time since I fell ill
have I thought I could ask for a cure. I place my-
self in the hands of Divine Providence, and ask
only this: that God derive from my poor self all
glory possible, at no matter what cost to me. Never-
theless, on November 15, as I was about to conduct
a Salutation for the Carmelite friars of Brussels in
honor of your little saint, an idea suddenly came
into my mind: that I might seek her aid. I was just
crossing the threshold of the Church. On reaching
my prayer-stool, I asked myself whether really I
could pray for a cure (at the time I did not know

232 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

how sick I was, though I felt I might be) , and I did
not dare to. I made a conditional supplication, which
was after all an act of self-surrender.

"I have several labors under way which, cer-
tainly, I should be eager to continue for the glory
of God and for the sake of my clergy. But would
not sacrifice of my personal interest in them be a
still better way to serve and glorify God? God does
not need any of us !

"I think, then, that I am right in holding to my
attitude of self-surrender. But I think, too, that it
would not be inconsistent with that attitude were
I to ask you to question your little saint as to what
would be best, and to suggest that you substitute
for me in craving her intercession."

Monsignor Mercier had feared from the first
that his malady would be incurable. The doctors
did not abandon hope, and, as is customary in such
cases, they advised surgery.

"If you think," he said, "that by submitting to
an operation I have sixty chances out of a hundred
of being able to do some useful work, then operate :
otherwise, no."

And he fixed the twenty-ninth of December, him-
self, as the date for the operation.

Before leaving for Brussels the Cardinal desired
once more to meet the students of his seminary.

THESAINT 233

The final counsel he delivered had for those young
men all the solemn force of the last wishes of a
dying father. His farewell concluded with words
of supreme resignation:

"And now God may do with me as He will."
The operation was not carried through to the
end: the surgeons found the disease too far
advanced. The best they could do was to make the
patient's sufferings as bearable as possible. Stretched
on a cot in a little white room similar in its simplicity
to his humble chamber in Malines, he complained
only of one thing: he had always slept on a bed
of straw the mattress of his iron cot was too
luxurious !

His intellectual powers had not been impaired in
the slightest, and he resolved to devote his remain-
ing strength, up to his very last breath, to the
interests of the Church and the affairs of his diocese.
During the first days in the hospital, after hearing
mass celebrated at his bedside by one of his nephews,
he strove to carry out, minute by minute, the pro-
gram he would have followed in his study in Malines.
He .gave his usual audiences, despatched routine
business, signed his letters regularly. Thoughtful of
others as always, he was especially desirous of show-
ing his gratitude to Canon Van Olmen in some
worthy manner before he died. Four or five days
before the end, he telegraphed to the Holy See ask-

234 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

ing that the canon who had served as secretary-
general to the archbishopric for forty years be re-
warded with a prelacy. And he had the satisfaction
of learning that his request had been granted.

Meanwhile the news of the great archbishop's
illness had spread to all Catholic countries. On the
eighteenth of January (1926) the Abbe Portal, one
of the promoters of the Conversations of Malines,
came hurrying to Brussels, after notifying his friend,
Lord Halifax, of the Cardinal's condition. The
next day Lord Halifax left London and hastened to
the dying Cardinal. On learning of the English lord's
presence in Brussels, Monsignor Mercier sent him
the following message:

"His Eminence would be very happy if Lord
Halifax could favor him by attending mass to-
morrow morning in his room."

The visitor accepted eagerly. Entering the little
white chamber the following morning, Lord Hali-
fax sank to his knees at the bedside, kissing the
hands the sick man held out to him. The Cardinal
blessed him ; then, raising himself in bed, opened his
arms and pressed the old man to his heart. For a
long while the Cardinal's head rested upon the
shoulder of this friend of another faith. Lord Hali-
fax, eighty-seven years of age at the time, was one
of the noblest figures of the Anglican Church. But

THE SAINT 235

he had spent his life in the cause of the union of the
two churches ; and it was a moving sight indeed, this
final embrace of two men, both seeking on the thresh-
old of eternity to unite their hearts in the presence
of the same Heavenly Father !

Mass began, celebrated by Canon Dessain. Lord
Halifax continued kneeling, absorbed in a long
prayer. The sick man entered into every motion of
the priest, and one could divine from his attitude
in the presence of the Host that he was offering
himself as a victim. After the thanksgiving Abbe
Portal and his companion withdrew ; but the Cardi-
nal had set January 21 as the date for another visit.

The interview of that day was even more solemn.
The Archbishop was, so to speak, to dictate his dy-
ing wishes regarding the union of the churches he
so ardently prayed for. And he did make known
his last hopes and final suggestions concerning the
negotiations in hand. The two men agreed on the
next steps to be taken, on the aid to be sought, and,
in particular, on the text of a letter to be sent to
the Archbishop of "Canterbury. The letter read:

Brussels , January 21, 1926.
Your Grace,

In the midst of the trial which it has been God's good
pleasure to send me during these recent weeks, I cannot voice
the satisfaction and the consolation I have experienced at re-
ceiving a visit from our revered friend, Lord Halifax. He

236 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

has told me of the constant desire for union which you har-
bor. I am happy to have that assurance. It is a source of
strength to me in this present hour.

Ut unum sint is the supreme desire of the Master. It is
the desire of the Pope ; it is mine ; it is also yours. May it be
realized in its fullness!

The tokens of sympathy which your Grace has been kind
enough to send me have touched me deeply. I thank you for
them with all my heart, and I beg your Grace to accept the
expression of my most worshipful devotion.

J. D. CARDINAL MERCIER,

Archbishop of Malines.

The visitors allowed the patient to rest for a
time. Then they reappeared for final adieux. Lord
Halifax stepped to the Cardinal's bedside and was
made to sit down. They remained in silence for long
moments, affectionately holding each other's hands.
The sick man finally broke the clasp ; then, using his
left hand to remove the pastoral ring he wore on
his right, he presented the ring to his guest.

"My very dear friend," he said, "look at this
ring. It bears engravings of my patrons, St. Desire
and St. Joseph. It also bears the figure of St. Rom-
baut, the patron of our cathedral. My family gave
it to me when I was appointed bishop. I have worn
it almost constantly since. When I am gone, I ask
that it be given to you."

Too moved to speak, Lord Halifax made a ges-
ture of protest.

"Please, please!" insisted Abbe Portal.

THE SAINT 237

And the Anglican champion of the pact with
Rome was persuaded to carry away the ring of the
Catholic archbishop as a symbol of Christian union.

That was the supreme "Conversation of Ma-
lines" !

Other visitors of note gathered about the aged
prelate's bed of suffering. Members of the Supreme
Court and the Senate came one by one to pay their
respects. We may note particularly the visit of the
ex-prime minister, M. Carton de Wiart, whom the
archbishop had always held in high regard. Prince
Leopold, heir apparent to the royal throne, whom
Monsignor Mercier had in part directed in his
studies, had been absent on a voyage of exploration
in the Belgian Congo. The moment he returned to
'Brussels, he hastened to his revered master; and
the Cardinal impressed upon him in a final conversa-
tion the principles he should follow in the great
task Providence had in store for him.

A few days before his death the Cardinal
addressed the following farewell to the priests of
his diocese:

"During my hours of meditation, as all human
hopes vanished from my eyes, leaving my soul alone
with God alone, my thoughts went out to you more
and more ardently ; and I lived with you in unbroken
spiritual converse.

238 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

"It is the priest in you I see. Deprived of the
happiness of conducting holy mass myself, I asso-
ciated myself in my thoughts all day long with the
mass which the Sovereign Priest, Our Lord Jesus
Christ, celebrates at every moment, through the
agency of his ministers, on all the altars of our globe.
And mass assumed in my eyes an exceptionally strik-
ing character of reality, because the sacrifice on
Calvary, which it recalls, appeared to me under a
tangible form, with which it was vouchsafed me to
associate myself more actively and more directly
than usual.

"So I said to myself that it was my duty to make
you sharers in the favor that God was granting me,
by enjoining you, in these hours that are perhaps
my last on earth, always to conduct the holy liturgy
of the mass as if you were yourselves present on
Calvary, and to infuse into the ceremony all the
fervent faith and devotion of which you are capa-
ble.

"My very beloved, I feel as if I had liberated
my conscience in sending you this final exhortation.
You. became priests with a view to performing the
holy sacrifice of the mass."

And the sick man now thought constantly of his
priests !

"I love them so!" he kept repeating. "Tell them,
please, how greatly I have loved them!"

THE SAINT 239

And after his priests, his students at the seminary !
Now and then, he would have a feeling he might get
well again; and he liked to say at such times:

"I shall go first of all to them. . . . Oh, yes,
I'll go and see them much more frequently than I
have done in the past."

His body, however, which had risen at first to the
limit of its strength against the spread of the disease,
gradually weakened from day to day. During one
of his last nights, he was assailed by a terrible thirst,
without being able to moisten his lips. His thoughts
turned to Jesus on the cross, and he began to
murmur :

"Sitio! Siiiol"

The thirst continued implacable. He clarified his
thought :

"Yea, I thirst, to lead souls unto thee, O Lord!"

And with this cry of evangelical love upon his
lips, he finally got to sleep.

On Friday, the twenty-second of January, it was
evident that the end was near. Conscious, himself,
of feeling weaker, the Cardinal sent for the apostolic
nuncio, Monsignor Micara.

In the afternoon he said to Canon Dessain:

"What day is it?"

"It is Friday, Eminence."

"What time is it?"

240 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

"Three o'clock."

"Please summon at once my family and the vicars-
general, and let us have the prayers for the dying."

Soon the members of the archiepiscopal council,
the Cardinal's sister-in-law and nephews, the apos-
tolic nuncio, the sick man's confessor, Father Van
den Steen, his steward, Friar Hubert, and his faithful
domestics, Virginie and Frantz, were all gathered
around the bed of agony. As the prayers were read,
Monsignor Mercier followed attentively, himself
turning the pages of the ritual. At the Church's
supreme exhortation, "Proficiscere, anima chris-
tiana (Go forth unto God, O Christian soul),"
Monsignor Legraive hesitated for an instant, over-
come by his emotion.

"Proficiscere" prompted his Eminence.

And he found strength, at the end, to give every
one a blessing. The next day, Saturday, his nephew
came in as usual to offer mass.

"The mass of Mary the Intercessor!" said the
prelate.

The ceremony finished, the Cardinal invited all
the priests present in the hospital to come into his
room. He blessed them, and then he tenderly
thanked his nurses for the care they had lavished
on him.

Pneumonia, however, was progressing in his lungs
and breathing was becoming difficult.

THE SAINT 241

"Eminence," said Father Van den Steen, "we are
going to recite the Te Deum to thank God for the
favors He has granted you during your life."

A nod of approval indicated the dying man's
acquiescence.

"Magnificat!" he exclaimed all at once.

They recited that holy canticle, then, in response to
a second request, the De Profundis. Arriving at the
verse: Si iniquitates observaveris, Domlne . . . ,
the Cardinal raised his hands in a gesture of such
pathetic supplication that tears burst from all eyes.
There were tears, there were prayers, there was
silence in the room of mourning, but such serenity
in the face of death was at the same time a comfort
and a consolation, a foretaste, as it were, of the
great peace of Paradise !

At three o'clock in the afternoon, a barely per-
ceptible sigh escaped the pale lips.

The soul of the great Cardinal stood before its
God.

*

Hardly had the news of his death crossed the
frontiers of Belgium than the whole world was
stirred, and went into mourning in one universal
impulse of veneration. On all sides Cardinal Mercier
was compared to the greatest bishops of history,
some even ranking him with Augustine, Ambrose,
and Leo. A defender, as they had been, of civic

242 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

rights and, as they had been, a great teacher, a
great citizen, a great prelate all in one, he became at
that moment a part of mankind's heritage of beauty.

The publication of his testament strengthened still
more the feeling that the prelate had truly realized
the perfection of Christian ministry. It was dated on,
Holy Saturday of the year 1908, the second anniver-
sary, that is, of his consecration as bishop. Humbly
accepting the sentence of death pronounced upon
every earthly creature and placing his soul in the
hands of his Creator, the Cardinal entrusted him-
self, for his eternal destiny, to the infinite merits of
Jesus Christ whose cause he had so long served. He
thanked the Pope for the signal favors bestowed on
his sacerdotal career, and with touching insistence
asked that the wrongs he might have done one day
or another be forgotten. Then disposing like a true
servant of the Church of the few possessions that
would be found after his death, he added :

"I leave but little. I had no personal fortune, and
what I have earned in the exercise of my functions
or by publications I have always sought to apply
to good works, striving to live, myself, from day to
day. The few savings that will be found at my
death are to pay my housekeeping bills and the ex-
penses of my burial, and, whatever remains there-
after is to be used in works of charity and edu-
cation. I leave to my nephews my equity in the

THESAINT 243

farmhouse at L'Hermite. Aside from that, they
must, as they well know, earn their livelihoods by
their own work. ..."

After eighteen years at the head of one of the
richest benefices in the world, the Cardinal had
found no reason to change these arrangements. He
departed from this world as poor as the humblest
cure under his jurisdiction.

His will was faithfully respected, save for the
disposition relating to the expenses of his burial.
The government of King Albert I judged that the
defender of Belgium during the war deserved the
honor of a national funeral on a parity with those
citizens (but three in number Rogier, Lamber-
mont, and General Leman), to whom the country
had paid that tribute in the century of its history.

On the appointed day, representatives of the
Catholic powers, qualified delegates of the allied
armies, and delegates of university faculties the
world over, joined the royal family of Belgium in
rendering final homage to the man who had been
the support of an imperiled throne as well as the
proudest minister of a threatened altar. Throngs
assembling from all the provinces of Belgium
followed the King and the princes behind the prel-
ate's hearse, while tear-stained eyes looked upon
him as the father of the Belgian people and the
savior of the nation. At Ste-Gudule in Brussels al-

244 A LIFE OF CARDINAL MERCIER

most royal honors were paid the remains of the
magnanimous citizen who, in that same cathedral,
had proclaimed in the face of the invader the com-
ing triumph of a liberated country.

Monsignor Mercier had expressed a wish to be
buried in his own cathedral, and the clergy of Ma-
lines were calling for their archbishop. The next
day, accordingly, a more intimate procession, made
up primarily of priests, students, families of the war
dead, and poor people whom the Cardinal had suc-
cored, escorted through the streets of the old city
a bier which distinguished citizens of the diocese
had volunteered to carry on their shoulders to its
final resting-place. The penetrating melodies of the
Gregorian Requiem once more enveloped the de-
ceased prelate in their melancholy sweetness and
their poetry of hope. At last, while tears fell fur-
tively and hands were outstretched to press rosa-
ries against its coffin, the body reached the chill
darkness and the deep silence of its tomb.

As long as Cardinal Mercier lived, the glory of
the patriot and the man eclipsed, in the popular
mind, the halo of the saint. Marshal Foch had said:

"He is the outstanding figure of our time."

And this judgment pronounced by one hero upon
another of like stature was accepted by every one.

But the death of Monsignor Mercier brought

THE SAINT 245

about a change of emphasis. Hardly had he closed
his eyes when endless crowds began filing past his
remains praying for his divine intercession. A spirit
of supplication seemed to pervade the immense
throngs that hastened to Malines, as to Brussels, to
to pay him last respects. The room where he died
became a place of pilgrimage, and people reported
miraculous favors obtained by praying on the stone
that covers his sepulchre. Six months had not passed
before all Belgium was invoking him as the nation's
patron saint. It was Monsignor Waffelaert, bishop
of Bruges and dean of the Belgium clergy, who
took the initiative toward obtaining the Cardinal's
beatification. And prayers are still being recited in
Belgium to that end.

THE END

NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

Writings of Cardinal Mercier are, in general, quoted in
the foregoing from his (Euvres pastorales, actes, allocutions,
lettres, Bruxelles, Dewit, 1924, 3 vols.

CHAPTER I

P. 3. At the time of the Cardinal's death, the Socialist
anti-Clericals started a movement to purchase his birth-place
and convert it into a Labor Chamber. This roused the Catho-
lics to acquire the property.

P. 4. That the Cardinal's grandfather was a tanner has
been disputed.

P. 6. Cardinal Mercier himself states that his mother was
born on property at one time belonging to the Abbey of Sept
Fontaines. (Euvres pastorales, I, p. 329.

Pp. 78. The citation is from the Cardinal's speech at his
Sacerdotal Jubilee, printed in Bulletin du diocese de Malines,
vol. XIII, part IV (April, 1924).

P. II. The Abbe Oliviers died at Diest in 1926.

CHAPTER II

Pp. 14-5. For these memories of school life, see (Euvres
pastorales, I, p. 31.

P. 17. On the Mamelukes, see (Euvres pastorales, I, pp.
292-4.

P. 21. The citations are from Oudens, Souvenirs de jeun-
nesse, in Bulletin, cit. XIII, part IV.

247

248 NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

P. 24. The citation is from Psalm LXXXIV.

P. 28. For the citation see Goyau, Le Cardinal Merrier,
Paris, Perrin, 1924, pp. 212. The words of the Cardinal
come from Psalm XLIII : ad deum qiil Itetificat juventutem
mean.

CHAPTER III

Pp. 42-3. Quotation from A. Desmedt, writing in Bulle-
tin, cit., XIII, part IV, p. 12.

P. 49. For quotation see Leon Noel, L'ceuvre philoso-
phique du Cardinal Merrier, in Nouvelles litteraires, Jan.
20, 1926.

P. 51. Van Weddingen's publication is L'Ency 'clique de
S. S. Leon XIII et la restauration de la philosophic chre-
tienne, Brussels, 1880.

CHAPTER IV

P. 57. The Pope's words are quoted by Leon Noel, in his
brochure Le cardinal Merrier, Turnhout, Brepols, 1920
(series Les grands Beiges}, p. 2O.

P. 61. Quotation from Noel, ibid., p. 19.

P. 63. For the Cardinal's first lecture at Louvain see
Noel, Mgr. Merrier et la renaissance thomiste, in Bulletin,
cit., XIII, part IV, p. 25.

Pp. 65-6. M. Passelecq writes in La Libre Belgique, Jan.
31, 1926.

P. 66. The Cardinal's words, quoted by Passelecq, are
from his anniversary address at the Hoogstraeten Seminary,
Aug. 3, 1910.

CHAPTER V

P. 78. The Cardinal's Rapport sur les etudes superieures
de philosophic is published among his CEuvres pastorales.

NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 249

P. 91. On this painful episode in the Cardinal's life see
Vermersch, A la pieuse memoire du cardinal Merrier, in
Nouvelle Revue Theologique, April, 1926.

P. 93 E. M. Van Cauwelaert's articles appeared in an
Amsterdam newspaper, Stemmen onzer eeuw, Feb. 17, 1906.

Pp. 100-1. For the Pope's words, see Goyau, op. dt., p. 45.

CHAPTER VI

On the general subject matter of this chapter see Simons,
Le Seminaire Leon XIII, see Bulletin, cit., April, 1924.

Pp. 125-6. These speeches are reprinted in (Euvres pas-
torales, Vol. I, pp. 22 and 26.

CHAPTER VII

P. 130. M. de Wulf's article appears in the Revue neo-
scolastique de philosophie, Feb., 1926.

Pp. 131 F. The pastorals and remarks referred to are
printed in CEuvres pastorales, I, pp. 56, 113, 365, 233, 248,

259-

P. 137. On this volume see Charles Mercier, La vie du
cardinal Mercier, in the Revue universelle, March I, 1926.

P. 143. See Caeymaex, Bulletin, cit., XIII, part IV, p. 80.

P. 144. The speech on oppression of the Church in France
may be read in (Euvres pastorales, I, p. 137.

P. 145. The polemic with Le Peuple is reprinted in
(Euvres pastorales, II, p. IOO.

P. 147. For the Cardinal's remark on patriotism, see his
pastoral of Jan. 6, 1910, op. cit.

P. 151. For the Montalembert speech, see (Euvres pas-
torales, III, p. 153. On the article in L'Echo, see ibid. I, 452.

P. 152. The Baudrillart article appears in the Revue des
Deux Mondes, Feb. 15, 1926.

P. 153. The Cardinal's words are reported by Rutten, Le
cardinal Merrier, Liege, Pensee Catholique, 1926, p. 13.

250 NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

CHAPTER VIII

On the subject matter in this chapter see, in addition to
the circular letters published in the CEuvres pastorales, the
following: Fernand Mayence, La correspondence de S. E.
le cardinal Mercier avec le Gouvernment general allemand
pendant I' occupation, igi4~i8, Bruxelles, Dewit, 1919; the
article cited by Mgr. Baudrillart; the anonymous brochure
U?i eveque defenseur de la cite, Brussels Action Catholique,
1919.

The anecdote of the young German lieutenant was taken
from a Swedish newspaper, the Svenska. Dagbladet.

CHAPTER IX

P. 197. The speech of M. Poincare was printed in La
Croix, Jan. 25, 1926.

P. 198. For the speech at Philadelphia see Le XX me
Siecle, Jan. 28, 1926.

Pp. 199200. For the speech at the Institute, see the
Nouvelles religieuses, Jan. I, 1926.

P. 202. On the Giraud episode see Giraud, Hommage
francais au cardinal Mercier, in the Revue generale, Feb.

15, 1925-

P. 205. On the Cardinal's labor policy consult G. Rae-
maekers, Le grand Cardinal beige, Brussels, Salon du livre,
1924.

P. 210. For the Cardinal's speech at Saint Rombaut, see
Bulletin, cit., June, 1924.

P. 212 ff. Since these pages were written the whole text
of the "Conversations of Malines" has been published by
the Oxford University Press in English and in French, Lon-
don, New York, July, 1927.

NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 251

CHAPTER X

Pp. 2245. The quotation is from Jacques Leclerc, La
grande figure du cardinal Merrier, Brussels, privately
printed, 1924.

Pp. 231-2. The letter is printed in the Annales de Sainte
Therese de Lisieux, Feb. 15, 1926. The details as to the
Cardinal's malady and operation are derived from the ar-
ticle of Charles Mercier, quoted above.

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